in the Mosque of Mecca, one may reply that the Prophet ﷺ might have refrained from going out to the jabbānah because the outskirts of Mecca were too cramped, not because the mosque itself was spacious.

I say: This very possibility mentioned by Imām al-Shawkānī was, in fact, hinted at by Imām al-Shāfiʿī himself, as al-Ḥāfiẓ related in the passage I quoted a moment ago. The exact words of Imām al-Shāfiʿī in al-Umm (1/207) are:

“I only said this because, at that time, they did not have a great deal of open space around their houses in Mecca.”

This clearly supports what al-Shawkānī (may Allah have mercy on him) concluded: attributing the Prophet’s ﷺ failure to pray in the mosque to the mosque’s limited capacity is nothing but conjecture—and conjecture deserves to be set aside.

Someone might still adduce as proof the report recorded by al-Bayhaqī in al-Sunan al-Kubrā (3/310) through the chain of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Taymī, who said:

“We were deluged with heavy rain during the governorship of Abān ibn ʿUthmān over Medina on the night of Eid al-Fiṭr. The people were therefore assembled in the mosque, and no one went out to the prayer-ground customarily used for the Fiṭr and Aḍḥā prayers.”