(1) This practice originates with uninformed laypeople and is a forbidden bidʿa (innovation). Muslim records it in his Sahih (no. 969, Book of Funerals, “Chapter: the command to level graves”); likewise Abu Dawud (3218), al-Nasaʾi 4/88-89, al-Tirmidhi (1049), al-Hakim 1/369, al-Bayhaqi 4/3, and Ahmad (741, 1061), all through the chain of Abu Waʾil, from Abu al-Hayyaj al-Asadi, who said: ʿAli b. Abi Talib told me, “Shall I not send you on the same mission for which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent me: leave no image without erasing it, and no elevated grave without leveling it.” Al-Shawkani comments in Nayl al-awtar 4/95: “This hadith shows that the sunnah is not to raise a grave to any considerable height, whether the deceased was eminent or not. Evidently, raising graves beyond the permitted limit is unlawful, a point explicitly stated by the Hanbali jurists and by groups of Shafiʿi and Maliki scholars.” Imam Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Shaybani writes in al-Athar, p. 45: “Abu Hanifa narrated to us, from Hammad, from Ibrahim, who said: ‘It used to be said, Raise the grave only enough for it to be recognized so that it is not stepped on.’” Shaybani adds: “This is our position: nothing should be added to the soil that comes out of the grave, and we dislike plastering it or erecting a mosque or a marker over it; this is also Abu Hanifa’s view.” Domes and shrines built over graves fall even more clearly under the prohibition, for they constitute turning graves into places of worship—a practice the Prophet ﷺ forbade and cursed, as reported in the Sahih collections. The mischief caused by such shrines is countless and grievous…