an indicator for downgrading the prohibition to mere reprehension. Some of al-Shāfiʿī’s associates went so far as to claim that buying and selling in the mosque is not disliked at all, but the ḥadiths flatly contradict them. The Ḥanafī jurists, for their part, drew a distinction: if such transactions become widespread they are disliked, whereas if they are infrequent there is no dislike. This, however, is a distinction without proof.

I say: Among those who explicitly permitted it is Ibn Ḥazm in al-Muḥallā, where he writes: “Selling is permissible in the mosque, for Allah the Exalted has said, ‘Allah has permitted trade’ (Qur’an 2:275). No prohibition regarding this has reached us except through the route of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, and that is merely a written memorandum (ṣaḥīfa).”

I say: The ḥadith of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb is contested, and the stronger view is that it is ḥasan (good), as has already been shown. Beyond that, the present ḥadith of Abū Hurayrah refutes him, and its chain is authentic in his own estimation, for he himself transmitted its second half, as noted earlier, and used it as evidence for the prohibition of announcing lost property in the mosque. Logically, then, his school should also deem buying and selling in the mosque forbidden—were it not that the ḥadith did not reach him in its entirety, but only in an abridged form.

Al-Ṣanʿānī, in his commentary, said: “This ḥadith proves the prohibition of buying and selling in mosques, and that anyone who witnesses it must say to both buyer and seller, ‘May Allah never make your trade profitable,’ proclaiming it aloud as a deterrent. The rationale, as mentioned earlier, is the Prophet’s statement: ‘The mosques were not built for that.’”

Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qārī said in al-Mirqāt: “Our scholars allow the person observing iʿtikāf to purchase goods provided the merchandise itself is not brought into the mosque. Among the reprehensible innovations are the sale of the Kaʿbah’s coverings behind the Maqām, the selling of books and other items in the Sacred Mosque, and even more outrageous…"