Likewise, some misguided people circumambulate the domed structure on the Mount of Mercy at ʿArafah just as one circumambulates the Kaʿbah.
As for gathering during this season in al-Masjid al-Aqṣā and the like to sing or beat the tambourine, that is among the most reprehensible wrongs for several additional reasons:
• It is done inside a mosque, even though such behavior is forbidden outside the mosques—so how much more in al-Masjid al-Aqṣā itself!
• It turns falsehood into a matter of religion.
• It is carried out during the sacred season.
By contrast, when a man goes to the mosque of his own town on the Day of ʿArafah to offer supplication and remembrance, this is the urban taʿrīf over which the scholars have differed. Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿAmr ibn Ḥurayth among the Companions practiced it, as did a number of Basran and Medinan scholars, and Imām Aḥmad allowed it.
(1) In manuscript A the wording is salat (prayer); this is a scribal corruption.
(2) By Allah’s grace, that dome no longer exists on Mount Arafat—first through Allah’s favor and then through the reformist call of Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, supported by the rulers of the Al Saud family. Allah enabled them to remove these innovated shrines and structures from the Arabian Peninsula. We ask Allah to protect the land against the plots of innovators who persist in trying to revive their deviations here.
(3) The printed edition adds: “al-Aqsa and the like.”
(4) In manuscripts C and D the reading is al-masjid (the mosque).
(5) The printed edition reads: al-rajul al-muslim (the Muslim man).
(6) The Companion in question is Amr ibn Hurayth ibn Amr ibn Uthman al-Qurashi al-Makhzumi. Reportedly born two years before the Hijra, he governed Kufa under Ziyad and later his son Ubayd Allah, and died there in 85 AH. See: al-Isaba 2:531, no. 5808; al-Istiab, margin of al-Isaba, 2:515.
(7) See: al-Sunan al-kubra by al-Bayhaqi, 5:117–18; al-Mughni and al-Sharh al-kabir, 2:259.