disagreement existed among them regarding this. When the Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—buried him ﷺ in the apartment, they did so expressly so that no one after them could turn his grave into a place of worship, as has already been explained in the report of ʿĀʾishah and others ⦗14-15⦘.

Yet something occurred after their time that they had never envisaged. In 88 AH al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik ordered that the Prophet’s Mosque be torn down and rebuilt, adding to it the lodgings of the Messenger of Allah’s ﷺ wives, so that the Prophetic chamber—ʿĀʾishah’s room—was incorporated into the new structure. By that change the grave came to lie inside the mosque.(1)

At that moment no Companion remained in Madinah, contrary to what some people have imagined.

The distinguished scholar and ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Hādī said in al-Ṣārim al-Munkī ⦗136⦘:

“The chamber was only incorporated into the mosque during the caliphate of al-Walīd b. ʿAbd…”