a) Etiquettes, which comprise both obligatory and recommended acts:
- It is obligatory to purify the mosques, sweep them, and fragrance them with khuluq (a perfume) and other scents, for “the Messenger of Allah ﷺ commanded that mosques be built within the residential quarters and that they be kept clean and perfumed.” This ḥadīth is narrated by ʿĀʾishah (Allah be pleased with her), is authentic, and has already been cited with its supporting narrations at the beginning of the chapter.
Ibn Mājah (1/ 253) also transmits—through the chain of al-Ḥārith ibn Nabḥān, narrated to us by ʿUtbah ibn Yaqẓān, from Abū Saʿīd, from Makḥūl, from Wāthilah ibn al-Asqaʿ—a marfūʿ report:
“Keep your children, your madmen, and the wicked among you away from your mosques, as well as your buying and selling, your disputes, your raised voices, the enforcement of legal penalties, and the unsheathing of swords. Establish places of purification at their entrances, and perfume them with incense on Fridays.”
Al-Būṣīrī states in al-Zawāʾid: “Its isnād is weak, for al-Ḥārith ibn Nabḥān is unanimously considered weak.” For that reason Ibn Kathīr (3/ 293) remarked, “Its chain is weak.” Al-Mundhirī likewise noted (1/ 120): “Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Kabīr from Abū al-Dardāʾ, Abū Umāmah, and Wāthilah; he also recorded it—in al-Kabīr, with some rearrangement—from Makḥūl on the authority of Muʿādh, but Makḥūl did not hear from him.”
I say: In al-Ṭabarānī’s first chain appears al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Kathīr al-Laythī al-Shāmī, and he is weak, as stated in Majmaʿ (2/ 26); for this same reason Ibn al-Jawzī also listed the ḥadīth in al-Wāhiyāt and said: