This report is considered gharīb through this particular chain.
Abū Dāwūd also relates—from Muḥammad ibn Ḥātim, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Mūsā, Shaybān, Firās, and ʿAṭiyyah, on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar—that the Prophet’s Mosque, during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, had columns of date-palm trunks and was roofed with palm fronds. During Abū Bakr’s caliphate those trunks decayed, so he replaced them with new trunks and fronds. They decayed again in the caliphate of ʿUthmān, who rebuilt them with baked bricks, and they have remained firm to this day. This too is classified as a gharīb report.
Abū Dāwūd further records—from Mujāhid ibn Mūsā, Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm, his father, Ṣāliḥ, and Nāfiʿ—that Ibn ʿUmar said: In the time of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ the mosque was built of sun-dried bricks, its roof was of palm fronds, and its pillars were palm-wood. Abū Bakr made no additions to it. ʿUmar enlarged it, rebuilding it on the same plan of sun-dried bricks and palm fronds and restoring its wooden columns. ʿUthmān, however, altered it and expanded it greatly: he erected its walls with carved stone and plaster, replaced its columns with carved stone, and roofed it with teak.
Al-Bukhārī narrates the same tradition through ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī from Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm.
I say: ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān ﵁ enlarged the mosque in accordance with the Prophet’s saying, “Whoever builds a mosque for Allah, even as small as a sand-grouse’s nest, Allah will build for him a house in Paradise.” The Companions present endorsed his action and did not alter it after him—and this serves as evidence that
(1) In Sunan Abī Dāwūd (no. 452), under the Prayer section, chapter “On the construction of a mosque,” and its isnād is weak, as the compiler notes.
(2) In the printed edition it reads “ʿAbd Allāh,” a copyist’s error; the correct reading, as found in the ḥadīth manuscripts, in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, and in his biography in Tahḍīb al-Kamāl (vol. 2, p. 889), is Abū Muḥammad al-Kūfī.
(3) Both the manuscript and the printed edition read “Sanan,” a scribal mistake; the correct name, as verified in Sunan Abī Dāwūd and in his biography in Tahḍīb al-Kamāl (vol. 12, p. 592), is Shaybān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Tamīmī, their freedman, who died in 164 AH.
(4) The printed text reads “takhrabat,” a scribal error; the correct reading, as attested in the ḥadīth manuscripts and in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, is “nakhurat.” The verb nukhira means “to decay” or “to crumble” (see al-Qāmūs, s.v. “nakhara”).
(5) The printed text reads “fa-mā zalat,” which is confirmed by both the manuscripts and by Sunan.
(6) In Sunan Abī Dāwūd (no. 451), under the Prayer section, chapter “On the construction of a mosque.”
(7) Both the manuscript and the printed edition read “from Abū Ṣāliḥ,” which is erroneous. The correct narrator, as established in Sunan Abī Dāwūd and in Tahḍīb al-Kamāl (vol. 13, p. 79), is Ṣāliḥ ibn Kaysān al-Madanī, who reports from Nāfiʿ, the freedman of Ibn ʿAmr, from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, from Ibrāhīm.
(8) al-Khaṭṭābī, in Maʿālim al-Sunan (vol. 1, p. 256), explains that al-qisah denotes a substance resembling plaster but lacking it. Abī Dāwūd, at the end of the ḥadīth, defines al-qisah simply as plaster.
(9) As-sāj: a type of timber imported from India (Fath al-Bārī, vol. 1, p. 540).
(10) Fath al-Bārī (p. 446), under the Prayer section, chapter “On the construction of the mosque.”
(11) Ibn Ḥibbān transmits it in this wording, via Abū Dharr, in his al-Iḥsān (no. 1610); al-Ustādh Shuʿayb, in his marginal note, comments: “Its isnād =.”