“It was a mercy from Allah.” I commented: that is, its location remained hidden from them. This is an explicit proof that the tree’s exact spot was never preserved in such a way that it could have been felled during the caliphate of Umar; hence the report describing its cutting is weak, as its own obvious discontinuity already suggests. Its weakness is further reinforced by what al-Bukhari records in the “Maghazi” section of his Sahih, through the chain of Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib from his father, who said: “I myself saw the tree, but when I later returned to it I could no longer recognize it.” Likewise, in the route of Tariq ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman: “I set out for the pilgrimage and passed by some people praying. I asked, ‘What is this mosque?’ They replied, ‘This is the tree under which the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, accepted the pledge known as bayʿat al-ridwan.’ So I went to Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib, and he laughed and said, ‘My father told me he was among those who pledged allegiance to the Messenger of Allah beneath that tree; yet when we came back the following year we had forgotten its location and could no longer find it.’ In another wording: ‘It was concealed from us.’ Saʿid then said: ‘The Companions of Muhammad, peace be upon him, did not know where it was—yet you people claim to know! Are you more knowledgeable than they?’ I say: Even if we have to set aside that interrupted report as corroboration for our present inquiry—once its weakness has been confirmed—we have gained something stronger that can serve as evidence here, namely this hadith of al-Musayyib and the hadith of Ibn ʿUmar. Al-Hafiz, while commenting on the latter, said: ‘The divine wisdom in obscuring the site was to avert temptation, given the blessing that had occurred beneath it; had it remained identifiable, some ignorant people might have magnified it to the point of believing that…’