I fear that al-Tahtāwī has fallen into this manifest contradiction because of blind following (taqlīd), which so often keeps a person from reflecting on what he writes or says. Apparently he quoted the correct rationale from certain scholars—scholars one could never imagine allowing for any exception—and then imported the exception itself from others who base the ruling on the alternative cause, namely impurity. This is evident from his words: (manbūsha aw lā) (“whether the cemetery has been dug up or not”), for such a phrase only makes sense if one adopts that weaker cause; on it rests the distinction he draws between a cemetery whose graves have been exhumed and one that has not—in the case of graves other than those of the prophets. If our explanation is not correct, then what purpose does that statement serve here? And what is the point of an exception that flatly contradicts the textual evidence?

Someone might object: according to al-Tahtāwī, the hadith is not general in meaning; rather, it concerns facing the grave, as al-Bayḍāwī has already stated. What supports this is his remark after mentioning the exception: (baʿda an lā yakūna al-qabr jihat al-qibla) (“provided that the grave is not in the direction of the qiblah”). With this qualification, he believes he has avoided contradicting the text.

I reply: his own statement—(wa-sawāʾ kānat fawqahu aw khalfahu…) (“whether it lies above him or behind him…”)—creates a difficulty for him. He uttered those words about the hadith in a way that shows he considers it fully general. Then what reasonable distinction can be drawn between forbidding all such prayer at graves other than those of the prophets and permitting it at their graves with that same condition, when the danger such a practice poses to sound creed is, in every respect, greater at the prophets’ graves than at any others?

After committing the foregoing lines to paper, I returned to the commentary on the Mishkāt entitled Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ Sharḥ Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ by Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qārī, and it became clear to me that al-Tahtāwī had taken the bulk of