that the finest graves are the effaced ones (1), and that the most honorable commemoration lies in the most virtuous deeds. For this very reason, the burial sites of the foremost Companions and the leading fighters in God’s cause disappeared from the view of later generations, save in the rarest of instances.

Thereafter the transmitters of history differed over pinpointing their locations, each narrator giving a separate account, and the conjectures of those who reported them clashing with one another.

Had there existed in the earliest days of Islam any trace of venerating graves—preserving the places of the dead by erecting domes and mosques over them—none of this disagreement would have arisen, and the graves of those noble Companions would not have remained unknown to us to this very day. Yet the graves of impostors and self-styled shaykhs, invented by later Muslim innovators in defiance of the practice of the Companions and Successors, have certainly not remained hidden. Indeed, most of these domes now resemble the temples of the ancients, reviving the ugliest chapters of paganism, leading people farthest from the truth and nearest to polytheism. If only Muslims would take heed