so Allah revealed to it, “Since you have done so, I shall build within your bosom a house in which I will be worshipped for forty years after the world has fallen into ruin. Days and nights will not pass before I restore to you your shade and your blessing.” He said, “Thus, in Allah’s sight it is like a weak, supplicating man.” (1)

Duḥaym said: “The four walls of the mosque were built by Hud—peace be upon him—whereas everything from the mosaic work upward was built by al-Walid ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (2).” He meant that al-Walid raised the wall and added from the level of the marble and vine design up to the very top. Another authority maintained that Hud built only the southern wall.

Abu Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Faraj, known as Ibn al-Barami of Damascus, said: “Ibrāhīm ibn Marwān narrated to us; I heard Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Milās say: I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Abī al-Muhājir say: Outside the Gate of the Clocks there was a rock upon which offerings were placed; if the offering was accepted, a fire would descend and consume it, but if it was not accepted, it remained unchanged.” I (the author) say: That rock was later moved inside the Gate of the Clocks and is still there today. Some among the common folk claim it is the very stone upon which Adam’s two sons placed their offerings—one of which was accepted while the other was not—but Allah knows best. (3)

Hishām ibn ʿAmmār said: “Al-Ḥasan ibn Yaḥyā al-Khushanī narrated to us that on the night of the Ascension the Messenger of Allah ﷺ prayed at the site of the Damascus Mosque.” Ibn ʿAsākir comments: “This chain is broken and highly objectionable; it is unsound through this route or any other.”

Abu Bakr al-Barami also said: “Abu Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Mughīrah the reciter narrated to us; my father told me, from his father, that al-Walid ibn ʿAbd al-Malik once instructed the custodians one night, ‘I wish to pray in the mosque, so do not allow anyone else to pray there tonight.’ Al-Walid then came to the Gate of the Clocks, requested that it be opened, and it was. There he found a man standing in prayer between the clocks and the Khadra Gate adjacent to the royal enclosure, closer to the Khadra Gate than to the Gate of the Clocks. Al-Walid said to the custodians, ‘Did I not order you to let no one pray in the mosque tonight?’ One of them replied, ‘Commander of the Believers, this is al-Khidr; he prays in the mosque every night.’” The author observes: “The chain and authenticity of this tale are questionable; a report such as this is insufficient to establish the existence of al-Khidr at all, let alone his praying in the specified place—Allah knows best.”

In more recent times it has become customary to call the southern corner by the western minaret the “Khidr Corner,” though I do not know the reason for this. What is firmly established by continuous transmission is that the Companions prayed there, and that alone grants it—and the other mosques in which they prayed—ample honor. The first to lead the prayer there was Abu ʿUbaydah ibn al-Jarrah: commander of the commanders in Syria, one of the ten promised Paradise, and the trustee of this Ummah. Many Companions prayed there as well, including Muʿadh ibn Jabal and others—yet this was before al-Walid remodelled the mosque into its present form. After that renovation, none of the Companions saw it in this new shape except Anas ibn—