“The whole earth is a place of prayer, except graveyards and bathhouses.”

This was narrated by Ahmad, the compilers of the four Sunan collections, and Ibn Hibbān in his Sahīh. Al-Tirmidhī said that its transmission contains inconsistency, because Sufyān al-Thawrī reported it with a disconnected chain. Other scholars, however, declared it authentic because other trustworthy narrators transmitted it with connected chains. Ibn Hazm also graded it authentic.

Sunan Abī Dāwūd reports that ʿAlī said:

“My beloved friend forbade me to pray in graveyards and forbade me to pray in the land of Babylon.”

The reports concerning this are very numerous.

Some scholars have supposed that praying in graveyards was forbidden because of ritual impurity, since their soil becomes mixed with the pus and flesh of the dead. These scholars may distinguish between new and old graveyards, and between cases where a barrier is present and those where it is not.

Yet this explanation is not mentioned in the hadith, nor does the hadith indicate it, either explicitly or by its apparent meaning. It is merely a reason they have conjectured. According to other scholars, the correct reason is what a number of earlier and later scholars—in the time of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, and others—have explained: this practice involves imitating the polytheists and can become a means leading to associating partners with Allah. This is why he forbade taking the graves of prophets as places of worship. He said:

“When a righteous man among those people died, they would build a place of worship over his grave and make those images in it.”

He also said:

“Those who came before you used to take graves as places of worship. Beware! Do not take graves as places of worship.”

He also forbade praying facing them.