know best its mountain paths, and the owner of the house knows best what it contains. By so doing, this monumental project will be kept safe from the scheming of Orientalists and the plotting of colonialists!

2 – The Hanafi school: prohibitive disapproval (karāha taḥrīmiyya)

This specific legal sense of karāha is the one adopted here by the Ḥanafīs. Imām Muḥammad, the disciple of Abū Ḥanīfa, states in his work al-Āthār (p. 45):

“We do not approve of adding anything beyond what has emerged from the grave, and we dislike white-washing it, coating it with clay, or erecting a mosque over it.”

When the Ḥanafīs employ the term karāha without qualification, it denotes prohibition, as is well known among them. Indeed, Ibn al-Malik, one of their jurists, explicitly ruled that this matter is forbidden, as will be shown shortly.

3 – The Mālikī school: outright prohibition

Al-Qurṭubī said in his Tafsīr (10 / 38) after citing the fifth hadith:

“Our scholars have said: this makes it unlawful for Muslims to take graves…"