nevertheless maintain that devoting one journey to ‘umrah and another to Hajj is better than tamattu‘ and qirān. Likewise, Abū Hanīfah’s position—as reported by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan—is that an ‘umrah undertaken from Kufa is better than tamattu‘ and qirān. A detailed discussion of this belongs elsewhere.

The point is that Muslims have continually travelled to his Mosque, but have not travelled to the graves of the prophets, such as the graves of Moses and Abraham, Allah’s intimate friend, peace be upon him. No Companion is known to have travelled to Abraham’s grave, despite their frequent visits to Greater Syria and Jerusalem. How, then, can travelling to the Messenger’s Mosque—which some people call visiting his grave—be treated as equivalent to travelling to the graves of the prophets?

Seventh: The prescribed journey to his Mosque entails doing there what was done during his lifetime and that of his rightly guided caliphs: prayer, salutations of peace upon him, praise, and supplication. These are also performed in other mosques and elsewhere, although his Mosque is superior. What is prescribed there is worship of Allah that He has commanded. By contrast, what those who travel to other people’s graves do falls within the category of associating partners with Allah: invoking them, asking them to fulfil needs, and taking their graves as mosques, sites of recurrent observances, and idols. This is prohibited by explicit textual evidence and scholarly consensus.

If you say: “But some people do such things at his grave.”