that he heard ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, when the people found fault with him for rebuilding the Messenger’s Mosque, declare: “You have spoken too much about this. I myself heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say:

‘Whoever builds a mosque’—Bukayr (one of the transmitters) said: ‘I think he also said, “seeking thereby Allah’s Face”’—‘Allah will build for him its like in Paradise.’

This report from ʿUthmān comes through additional lines of transmission as well. Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, al-Dārimī, Ibn Mājah, al-Bayhaqī, and Aḥmad all narrate it via ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Jaʿfar, who said: “My father related to me from Maḥmūd ibn Labīd that ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān wanted to renovate the mosque, but the people disliked the idea and preferred that he leave it as it was. He then said …,” and he cited the ḥadīth with the wording just mentioned, omitting the three parenthetical phrases. Those three additions occur in narrations other than ʿUthmān’s, except for the first, which Ibn Abī Shaybah records in this chapter through a different route from ʿUthmān, as noted in Fatḥ.

The same wording is also reported on the authority of other Companions. Al-Ṭabarānī in al-Ṣaghīr and al-Bayhaqī relate it through several chains from al-Aʿmash, from Ibrāhīm al-Taymī, from his father, from Abū Dharr, traced back to the Prophet, with the wording: “Whoever builds a mosque for Allah, even if it is only the size of a sand-grouse’s nest, Allah will build for him a house in Paradise.” This chain is sound. Al-Bazzār and Ibn Ḥibbān in his Ṣaḥīḥ have likewise recorded it, as mentioned in Fatḥ.