making it into a festival.
Yet the Law has prescribed that whenever we enter the mosque we say,
"Peace be upon you, O Prophet, and the mercy and blessings of Allah,"
just as we pronounce these very words at the close of each prayer.
Indeed, it is even recommended that anyone who enters a place where no one else is present send peace upon the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—for, as has already been explained, the salām reaches him from wherever it is offered.
Mālik and others therefore feared that repeating this at the grave every hour would amount to turning the grave into a festive gathering.
Besides, such conduct is an innovation. During the era of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with them—the Muhājirīn and the Anṣār came to the Sacred Mosque five times each day to perform the prayers, yet they did not, in addition, go to the grave to offer salām. They—may Allah be pleased with them—knew what the Prophet—Allah bless him and grant him peace—disliked in this matter and what he had forbidden, and so they would greet him upon entering and leaving the mosque and in the tashahhud, just as they had done while he was alive. The report from Ibn ʿUmar corroborates this.
Saʿīd narrates in his Sunan: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd related to us, saying