In the year 741 AH the ablution area was rebuilt once again, this time on a plan finer than before, and that basin disappeared without leaving a trace.
The shādhrawān (1) situated to the east of the Jīrūn fountain was completed sometime after the year 500—so I think, in 514 AH—and Allah, exalted and sublime, knows best.
Account of the beginnings of the sabʿ (2) in the Umayyad Mosque
Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd said:
Abū ʿĀmir (3) Mūsā ibn ʿĀmir al-Marī narrated to us; al-Walīd—meaning Ibn Muslim—narrated to us; he said that Abū ʿAmr al-Awzāʿī related, on the authority of Ḥassān ibn ʿAṭiyyah, who said:
“The darāsah (collective Qurʾānic review) is a recent practice introduced by Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl al-Makhzūmī on his visit to ʿAbd al-Malik. ʿAbd al-Malik kept him waiting, so he sat in the Damascus Mosque after the dawn prayer and heard a recitation. He asked, ‘What is this?’ He was told that ʿAbd al-Malik was reciting in the Khadraʾ. Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl (4) therefore recited, whereupon ʿAbd al-Malik began to recite in Hishām’s manner; a freedman of his did likewise, and those seated nearby in the mosque admired it, so they too adopted his mode of recitation.”
Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, the preacher of Damascus, said:
ʿAyyūb ibn Ḥassān narrated to us, al-Awzāʿī narrated to us, Khālid ibn Dihqān narrated to us, who said: “The first person to introduce the communal recitation in the Damascus Mosque was Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-Mughīrah al-Makhzūmī, and the first to introduce it in Palestine was al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jawshī (5).”
I say: Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl served as governor of the Prophet’s City; he was the one who struck Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib when the latter refused to pledge allegiance to al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik before his father’s death. Al-Walīd then removed him and appointed ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in his stead, as we have already mentioned.
Many eminent members of the second generation (the Tābiʿūn) in Damascus attended this sabʿ, among them Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl, his freedman Rāfiʿ, and Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī al-Muhājir—who had been the tutor of the children of ʿAbd al-Malik b