after the disappearance of the graves of those very Companions through whom this religion reached us and by whose hands God granted Islam victory, they would never have dared to build domes over tombs, to extol the dead with a veneration that both reason and the Sacred Law forbid, nor to oppose in all of this the Companions and Successors who entrusted us with their Prophet’s legacy—only for us to squander it—and the subtleties of his law—only for us to tamper with them.

Here, then, are the reports that Muslim records in his Ṣaḥīḥ concerning graves. Abu al-Hayyāj al-Asadī said: ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may Allah be pleased with him, told me, “Shall I not send you on the very mission for which the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—sent me? Leave no statue without erasing it, and no raised grave without leveling it.” Muslim also relates, on the authority of Thumāmah ibn Shufayy: “We were with Faḍālah ibn ʿUbayd in Byzantine territory, on Rhodes, when one of our companions died. Faḍālah ordered that his grave be leveled, and then said, ‘I heard the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—command that they be leveled.’” (1)