Further reports on the subject come from Abū Hurayrah, Ibn ʿAbbās, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām, and others, and—God willing—we have already cited their ḥadīths at the beginning of this work.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ stated in Fatḥ al-Bārī (7/195) that the Abū Hurayrah narration in question possesses a sound chain in Sunan Abū Dāwūd. That claim is incorrect, for the report appears there (1/8), as elsewhere, only through the route of Yūnus ibn al-Ḥārith, who is weak, as al-Ḥāfiẓ himself affirms in al-Taqrīb; Ibn Kathīr says the same.

Ibn al-ʿArabī likewise erred in his Tafsīr (1/415) when he declared, “This ḥadīth is not authentic.” In reality, the ḥadīth is sound when all its chains are considered together. Even if he was speaking specifically of Abū Hurayrah’s route, he ought to have added the corroborating reports—some of which we have quoted in full and others we have merely referenced—before issuing such a judgment.

Once it is understood that the apparent sense of the verse and its occasion of revelation point to the mosque of Qubāʾ, while the ḥadīth, by contrast, indicates the Prophet’s Mosque, the two pieces of evidence must be harmonized. Ibn Kathīr says:

“There is no contradiction between the verse and the ḥadīth, for if the mosque of Qubāʾ was founded on God-consciousness from the very first day, then the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is even more deserving of that description.”

These words seem to echo the statement of his teacher Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him—who, in his commentary on Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (p. 172), said: