into narrow straits, so that they feel obliged to invent flimsy arguments that would convince no one but a mindless beast.

One of the clearest proofs that the claim—that the early generations never voiced objections to those who decorated the mosques—is, on the whole, unfounded is the report transmitted by Saʿīd ibn Munawir. He said: Sufyān narrated to us, from Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Dhuʾayb, who recounted: “I entered a mosque at al-Juhfah with Ibn ʿUmar. When he noticed its crenellations, he stepped outside to another spot and prayed there. He then said to the owner of the mosque, ‘In this mosque of yours I saw—meaning those crenellations—something I likened to the stone altars of pagan times; order that they be demolished.’”

I have quoted this narration from Iqtidaʾ al-Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm Mukhālafat Aṣḥāb al-Jaḥīm by Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah.

Its chain of transmission is sound: all of its narrators are trustworthy transmitters cited in the Six Books, with the sole exception of this Ismāʿīl; he too is declared reliable in al-Taqrīb.

In al-Mudawwanah of Ibn al-Qāsim it is related: “He said: I heard Mālik—when the Mosque of Madinah and what had been done to its qiblah by way of ornamentation and the like were mentioned—say: ‘People disliked that when it was carried out, for it distracts the worshippers in their prayer; they gaze at it and it diverts them.’”

For this reason many scholars regarded it as disliked to pray in embellished and decorated mosques. Al-Munāwī states in al-Fayḍ: “The Shāfiʿī jurists have said: It is disliked to pray in a ‘mushraf’ mosque—that is, one that is conspicuously adorned—on the basis of what is reported in the Sunan of al-Bayhaqī.”