Know, then, that although these reports differ in their particular wordings, they all concur, in general, in forbidding anything that signals an undue veneration of graves—veneration that may lead to temptation and misguidance. Such acts include building mosques or domes over graves, pitching tents upon them, raising them above the legislated height, undertaking journeys and repeated visits to them ⦗1⦘, rubbing against them, and likewise seeking blessing from the relics of the prophets and similar practices.

All these matters are deemed unlawful by the early generations we have mentioned—the Companions and those who followed them. This shows that they unanimously held the underlying reason for prohibiting the construction of mosques over graves and other unauthorized forms of veneration to remain in force, namely the fear of misguidance and spiritual trial through the dead, as Imām al-Shāfiʿī (may Allah have mercy on him) explicitly stated earlier. Their continued application of the ruling based on this cause proves the point: the persistence of one necessarily entails the persistence of the other, as is self-evident, and this