general in scope, and the critical scholar Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qārī adopted the very same reading on the authority of several leading Ḥanafī jurists. In Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ, his commentary on Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ (1/456), he writes:

“The reason they were cursed is either that they used to prostrate before the graves of their prophets out of reverence for them—this is manifest polytheism—or that they performed the prayer meant for Allah within the prophets’ burial sites, prostrating on their graves and facing those graves while praying. Their intention was to worship Allah and to magnify the prophets excessively, and that is hidden polytheism, because it involves honoring a created being in a manner for which no permission has been granted. The Prophet ﷺ therefore forbade his community from doing so, either because the act resembles the practice of the Jews or because it contains hidden polytheism. This is how some of our commentators from among the imams have explained it, and it is supported by the variant wording, ‘warning against what they did.’”

I say: As for the first reason he mentions—prostrating to the graves of the prophets out of veneration—although it is not far-fetched that such a thing occurred among the Jews and the Christians, it is not the sense that first comes to mind from his ﷺ statement, “They took the graves…"