461 – ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said, “By Allah, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ offered the funeral prayer for the two sons of Bayḍāʾ inside the mosque.” Recorded by Muslim (1).

Vocabulary of the ḥadīth
– “By Allah, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ certainly prayed …”: The sentence contains three emphatic devices—the oath, the prefixed lām of emphasis, and the particle qad. ʿĀʾishah employed all three because some people denied the permissibility of performing a funeral prayer in the mosque, fearing it might be soiled.
– “the two sons of Bayḍāʾ”: They were Sahl and Suhayl, sons of Wahb ibn Rabīʿah. Their mother was Daʿd bint Juhdam of the Banū Fihr, whose sobriquet was “al-Bayḍāʾ.”
– “in the mosque”: The preposition fī indicates location; the mosque is the container, the prayer its content.

Points derived from the ḥadīth
1 – Ibn al-Qayyim states in Zād al-Maʿād that the Prophet’s regular practice was not to offer funeral prayers in the mosque; he usually prayed outside, though he did on occasion pray inside, and both ways are permissible.
2 – The present ḥadīth affirms the permissibility of conducting the funeral prayer in the mosque, yet, as Ibn al-Qayyim notes, such occurrences were rare; the prayer for the two sons of Bayḍāʾ was one of those few instances.
3 – Al-Bahūtī says in Sharḥ al-Zād: There is no objection to praying over the deceased in the mosque provided it will not be soiled. This is the view of al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and the majority of scholars. Ibn Abī Shaybah transmitted the wording: “ʿUmar prayed over Abū Bakr in the mosque, and Ṣuhayb prayed—”