Deliberately seeking out those spots is not part of the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Caliphs; rather, it is an innovation. A Companion’s opinion, when another Companion holds a different view, is not authoritative proof—so what of an opinion that stands alone, opposed to the overwhelming majority of the Companions?
Moreover, making a point of praying in such places opens the door to turning them into mosques and to imitating the People of the Book in precisely the matters we have been forbidden to imitate them. That, in turn, becomes a pathway to associating partners with God. The Lawgiver has already blocked this avenue by prohibiting prayer at sunrise and sunset and by forbidding the use of graves as places of worship. If He has forbidden even a legitimate prayer at a particular time or place as a preventive measure, how could it be deemed commendable to set out intentionally to pray and supplicate in a spot where the Prophet and his Companions merely happened to stand or pray, without ever intending it for worship?
Were such a practice acceptable, it would likewise be recommended to climb Mount Ḥirāʾ and pray there, or Mount Thawr and pray there, or to visit every site said to have been frequented by the prophets—such as the two so-called stations of Abraham and Jesus on the road to Mount Qāsiyūn in Damascus, or the cave alleged to be “the Cave of the Blood of Cain,” and countless other locations in the Ḥijaz, Greater Syria, and elsewhere.
Pursuing this path leads to the very same corruption that has arisen around graves. People will say, “This is the station of a prophet,” or “This is the grave of a prophet or a saint,” on the basis of a report whose source is unknown or a dream whose reality cannot be verified. The site then becomes a mosque, and soon it is an idol worshiped besides Allah—shirk built upon sheer fabrication! In His Book Allah often couples polytheism with falsehood, just as He couples truth with sincerity.
For that reason the Prophet ﷺ declared in an authentic narration, “False testimony has been put on a par with associating partners with Allah”—he repeated it three times—after which he recited the Almighty’s words: