except there. If he has no right to keep to one particular place for prayer, what then of someone who permanently reserves a spot for himself? This applies even if he uses it only for the purposes for which mosques are built, such as prayer, remembrance of Allah and the like. How much more so if he treats the mosque as a home, regularly eating, drinking, sleeping and conducting all his other affairs there, including activities for which mosques were not built!

This is prohibited by agreement of the Muslims. Concessions regarding some of these activities were granted only to those in need, such as the People of the Suffa. A man would arrive in Medina as an emigrant with nowhere to shelter, so he would stay at the Suffa until he could establish a household or find somewhere to stay; then he would move out. Another example is the poor woman who used to shelter in the mosque and sweep it. Likewise, Ibn ʿUmar used to spend the night in the mosque while unmarried, because he had no home to return to until he married.

The same applies to ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib: when he and Fātima had a disagreement, he went to the mosque and slept there. A distinction must therefore be drawn between occasional, limited use and use by those in need, on the one hand, and frequent, habitual use and use by those without such needs, on the other.

For this reason, Ibn ʿAbbās said, “Do not make the mosque a place for sleeping at night or resting at midday.” This concerned merely sleeping there; what, then, of the other activities mentioned? The scholars even disagreed over whether someone observing a devotional retreat should eat in the mosque or at home, despite his being instructed to remain in the mosque and leave it only out of necessity.

The leading scholars disapproved of private enclosures being set up in the mosque when some rulers introduced them solely for prayer. Yet those rulers only