says it seventy times hope that his only reward is that an angel from among the angels will invoke blessings upon him? The authentic reports already cited make it clear that his blessings and salutations reach him whether they are offered from near at hand or from afar.

Second: At most, this account suggests that it is recommended for the visitor to include supplication during the act of visitation, just as the jurists have mentioned in the rites of Ḥajj. This, however, is not our present issue. We have already explained that if a person undertakes a legally sanctioned visit and, in its course, makes a supplication, this is not disapproved—as some scholars have stated—though the matter is disputed. What is reliably transmitted from the early generations is that they disliked standing at his grave for the purpose of supplication, and that view is the sounder one.

What we consider reprehensible, then, is to set out with the express intention of making supplication there in the first place. By way of analogy: if someone enters a mosque, performs the two-rakʿah prayer of greeting the mosque, and inserts a supplication within it, that is not disliked; or if he performs ablution somewhere, prays there, and includes a supplication in his prayer, that likewise is not disliked. But if he deliberately singles out that particular spot—or a mosque to which the Law has given no special distinction over other mosques—for supplication, he is forbidden to make such a specification.

Third: Any answered prayer in this context is most likely due to the abundance of blessings invoked upon the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—for sending blessings upon him before, during, and after one’s supplication is among the strongest means by which the rest of the supplication is hoped to be answered, as the transmitted reports indicate. One such report is the saying of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—may Allah be pleased with him—related both as his own statement and as a Prophetic ḥadīth:

“Supplication remains suspended between heaven and earth until you send blessings upon your Prophet.”

It was recorded by al-Tirmidhī.