in a mosque have said that one of its benefits is to mark the direction of the qibla. We reply that such a marker is needed only when the mosque has no minbar; if no minbar is present, nothing prevents one from erecting a wooden post to point to the qibla, as occurs in this hadith. That is better than building mihrabs, for adopting them is an imitation of the Christians. Al-Bazzar has transmitted from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd that he disliked praying in a mihrab and said, “They were found only in churches, so do not imitate the People of the Book,” meaning that he disliked praying in the recess (ṭāq). Al-Haythamī comments in al-Majmaʿ: “Its transmitters are trustworthy.” I add: Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr likewise reported it with the wording that he used to dislike praying in the recess and said, “It comes from the churches; do not imitate the People of the Book.”

He also narrated from ʿUbayd ibn Abī al-Jaʿd who said: “The Companions of Muhammad ﷺ used to say: One of the signs of the Hour is that madhābiḥ will be installed inside the mosque”—that is, the recesses (1).

What is striking about this report is that it interprets the madhābiḥ in the mosque as recesses, i.e., mihrabs in the technical sense—just as the hadith explained madhābiḥ as mihrabs—indicating that they are indeed those recesses. This lends further weight to al-Suyūṭī’s understanding of the hadith, were it not for the demonstrative pronoun it contains.