- As for any place other than these ten locations, praying there is permissible without the least degree of dislike. Some of them are explicitly mentioned in the sources and therefore deserve clarification. They are:
First: A spot on which impurity has fallen and whose traces have then disappeared by drying. For, in the Prophet’s time, “dogs would urinate, come and go in the mosque, yet they did not sprinkle anything on those places,” even though the Companions used to stand there for prayer and for other activities.
This ḥadīth is related from Ibn ʿUmar (Allah be pleased with him).
Al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd—whose wording has just been quoted—and al-Bayhaqī all record it. Al-Bayhaqī’s route is through Yūnus from Ibn Shihāb: “Hamzah b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar told us that Ibn ʿUmar said, ‘I used to spend the night in the mosque during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while I was a young, unmarried man, and the dogs…’” and so forth.
In al-Bukhārī the report is muʿallaq, for he says, “Aḥmad b. Shabīb stated: my father narrated to us from Yūnus,” and in some manuscripts the phrase “used to urinate” is absent.
Al-Bayhaqī, however, transmits the report with a continuous chain from this very Aḥmad b. Shabīb.
Ṣāliḥ b. Abī al-Akhdar also corroborated it from al-Zuhri, but he diverged in the chain, saying, “from al-Zuhri, from Sālim b. ʿAbd Allāh, from his father,” and Aḥmad recorded it in this form.
Ṣāliḥ b. Abī al-Akhdar is weak in his retention, especially when he contradicts a reliable narrator, as he does here.