It is recommended that the one placing the deceased into the grave say, “In the name of Allah and upon the creed of the Messenger of Allah.”1
It is obligatory to orient the body toward the qiblah, and it is recommended to lay him on his right side.
It is forbidden to bury another person on top of him or alongside him except in case of necessity.
It is recommended2 to throw three handfuls3 of soil over him and then heap the earth.
Most scholars considered it commendable to prompt him4 with the words of testimony after the burial5.
It is recommended to sprinkle the grave with water and to raise it about a handspan above the ground.
It is disliked to adorn the grave, coat it with plaster, burn incense at it, kiss it, circumambulate around it, lean against it6, sleep there overnight, laugh nearby, engage in worldly talk, write on it, sit on it, build over it, or walk on it in shoes—unless one fears thorns or the like.
It is forbidden to place lamps in graveyards, to bury inside mosques, to bury in someone else’s property, or to exhume graves.
(1) Reported by al-Tirmidhi, no. 1046, who classed it hasan gharib in this chain; also by al-Hakim, 1/366, who said: “This hadith fulfils the conditions of the two Shaykhs, yet they did not include it.” He added: “Hammam b. Yahya is reliable and trustworthy; when he transmits a hadith with a full isnad, no defect can be alleged, and Shuʿbah transmitted it in its mawquf form.”
(2) In manuscript M—and likewise in N—the verb appears in the past tense.
(3) Manuscript N reads: “an yahthu” (“that he scatter”).
(4) Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah states that prompting the deceased (talqin al-mayyit) is, on the stronger view, disliked because the Prophet did not do it; what is recommended is to supplicate for the dead. Ibn al-Qayyim likewise notes that the Prophet neither recited Qur’an at the grave nor prompted the deceased; therefore talqin is unfounded. See Hashiyat al-Rawd, 3/123-124.
(5) The phrase “after the burial” is absent from manuscript A.
(6) Manuscript A reads ʿalayhi; the same wording appears in al-Iqnaʿ, 1/233, and al-Muntaha, 1/166, whereas the present edition follows al-Ghayah, 1/269.