He was asked, “A man goes to these stations and travels to them—what do you think of that?”
He replied, “In view of the ḥadith of Ibn Umm Maktūm, who asked the Prophet ﷺ to pray in his house so that he might make it a place of prayer, and in view of what Ibn ʿUmar used to do—tracing the places where the Prophet ﷺ had stood and following his tracks—there is no harm in a man visiting the stations. The problem is that people have gone to excess in this matter and have done far too much.”

Aḥmad ibn al-Qāsim likewise related from him that he was asked about a man who visits these stations in Madinah and elsewhere, travelling to them. He said:
“According to the ḥadith of Ibn Umm Maktūm—who asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to come and pray in his house so that he could turn it into a mosque—and according to what Ibn ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, used to do: he would trace the Prophet’s routes until he was once seen pouring water at a certain spot. When asked about it he said, ‘I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ pour water here.’ On this basis, there is no objection.”

He then said that he granted a dispensation for it, adding, “But people have gone to extremes and overdone it in this regard,” and he mentioned the grave of al-Ḥusayn and what people do there. Both reports were transmitted by al-Khallāl in his Book of Manners.

Thus Abū ʿAbdullāh—may Allah have mercy on him—drew a careful distinction concerning the stations, meaning places that still bear traces of the prophets and the righteous without having been turned into mosques, such as certain sites in Madinah. He differentiated between the occasional visit that is not treated as a recurring festival and the frequent, festival-like visit that is treated as an ‘Īd, as noted earlier. In doing so he combined the transmitted reports with the statements of the Companions. For al-Bukhārī relates in his Ṣaḥīḥ, on the authority of Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah: “I saw Sālim ibn ʿAbdullāh deliberately choose certain spots along the road and pray there, and he would say that his father used to pray in those places and that he had seen the Prophet ﷺ …”