and saddling one’s mount for any destination other than the three mosques; for it is a settled principle among the majority of legal theorists that a prohibition necessarily renders the act either unlawful or at least disliked, according to the supporting proofs. This is the argument adopted by those who regard shortening the prayer on such a journey as impermissible, because the journey itself is under prohibition. (1)

Among those who held it to be forbidden are the eminent Shafiʿi scholar, Imām Abū Muḥammad al-Juwaynī, the eminent Ḥanbalī scholar, Imām Abū’l-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl, and it is the view that the Mālikī judge Iyāḍ indicates he prefers. (2)

As for the hadiths that recommend visiting graves, they are interpreted as referring to visits that do not involve saddling a mount and setting out on a journey, so that the texts may be harmonised. (3)

One may further contend that no report can properly oppose the hadith, ‘Mounts are not to be saddled except to [the three mosques],’ because no other narration equals it in rank; it belongs to the highest category of sound traditions. Allah knows best.

It has also been reported (4) that the respondent was disparaged and constrained—a matter that would leave any intelligent person bewildered, any discerning person astonished, and would cast one into troubling doubt! His answer in this issue merely sets out the scholarly disagreements; it does not pronounce any censure of the righteous or the prophets. For acting in accordance with his—peace and blessings be upon him—statement in the rigorously authenticated hadith