they passed away, their people remained devoted to their graves and sculpted likenesses of them; after a long while those images came to be worshipped. Al-Bukhārī relates this in his Ṣaḥīḥ, as do the exegetes such as Ibn Jarīr and others.

Second: mosques built over graves. Performing the prayer there resembles the practice of the Jews and Christians. Concerning them the Prophet ﷺ said:

“When a righteous man lived among them and died, they would build a mosque over his grave and set up those images inside it; such people will be the worst of Allah’s creatures on the Day of Resurrection.”

He also said:

“Indeed, those before you used to take the graves of their prophets and righteous men as places of worship. Beware—do not turn graves into mosques; I forbid you to do so.”

The first ḥadīth is narrated by ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—when Umm Ḥabībah and Umm Salamah spoke of a church they had seen in Abyssinia that contained images; they mentioned it to the Prophet ﷺ, whereupon he gave this reply. It is recorded by al-Bukhārī, Muslim, al-Nasāʾī, Aḥmad, and Ibn Shaybah in his Muṣannaf.

The second ḥadīth is from Jundub ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bajalī, who said: “I heard the Prophet ﷺ five days before he died saying: ‘I declare before Allah that I have no intimate friend among you. Allah has taken me as a khalīl just as He took Abraham as a khalīl. Had I been permitted to take an intimate friend from my community, I would have taken Abū Bakr as my khalīl. Beware, those who came before you…’”—and he went on to relate the rest of the report. Muslim alone, among the six canonical collections, records it. Al-Shawkānī also attributed it to al-Nasāʾī, apparently meaning the Sunan al-Kubrā, yet I have not found it there.