The majority of scholars cited the account from your own land as evidence against Abū Hanīfa’s view that Friday prayer is not to be held in villages. They cited the report transmitted from Ibn ‘Abbās—may Allah be pleased with them both:

“The first Friday prayer held in Islam after the Friday prayer in Medina was in Bahrain, in a village called Jawāthā, one of the villages of Bahrain.”

They also cited the account of Abū Hurayra—may Allah be pleased with him—who was ‘Umar’s governor of Bahrain. He wrote to the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Umar—may Allah be pleased with him—seeking his permission to hold Friday prayer in the villages of Bahrain. ‘Umar wrote back: “Hold Friday prayer wherever you are.”

Perhaps those who told you that Friday prayer should not be held were following the opinion of those who do not permit it in villages. Or perhaps they misunderstood the jurists’ statement in their abridged manuals: “It is to be held only in a village whose buildings are adjoining or close together, such that they fall under a single name.” They thus assumed that construction necessarily meant solid masonry made of clay, lime, stone, or sun-dried brick. This is a mistake on their part. Rather, scholars have explicitly stated that what counts as construction is whatever those permanently settled inhabitants customarily build with, whether reeds, wood, or similar materials.

Accordingly, the leading scholars distinguished between tent-dwelling Bedouins and settled residents on the grounds that the former move about and do not settle permanently in one place, unlike the latter. Some of the early Muslims used to build themselves houses of reeds. “The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, roofed his mosque with date-palm stalks, and the mosque would leak