My father narrated from Ibn ʿUmar that whenever he returned from a journey he would come to the grave of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and say, “Peace be upon you, O Abu Bakr; peace be upon you, O my father.” Although ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zayd is considered weak as a transmitter, the sound report cited earlier from Nāfiʿ shows that Ibn ʿUmar did not do this habitually, nor even most of the time.

How fine are the words of Imām Mālik: “Nothing will rectify the latter part of this community except what rectified its first part.”

Whenever a people’s adherence to the covenant of their prophets weakens and their faith diminishes, they try to compensate by inventing innovations, forms of idolatry, and the like. For this reason the leading scholars disliked touching or kissing the grave, and they built a barrier around it so that people would not pray toward it.

Thus the chamber of ʿĀʾishah in which he was buried remained separate from the mosque. The area between his pulpit and his house was the Rawḍah, and matters continued in that state throughout the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and those who came after them. Although the mosque was expanded and altered, the chamber itself remained unchanged, as did the other rooms that surrounded the mosque on its eastern and southern sides—until al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik rebuilt it, with ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz serving as his governor over the city.