according to one opinion, he should turn his back to the burial chamber; according to another, he should keep it to his left. This is their disagreement concerning the greeting. As for supplication, they did not disagree that he should face only the direction of prayer, not the burial chamber.

The account related about Mālik—that, when al-Mansūr asked him about facing the burial chamber, he instructed him to do so and said, “He is your means of approach and that of your father Adam”—is a fabrication attributed to Mālik. It has no known chain of transmission and contradicts what is reliably reported from him through chains of trustworthy narrators in the books of his disciples, as cited by Judge Ismāʿīl ibn Ishāq and others. For example, they reported that he was asked about people who stood for a long time facing the burial chamber, supplicating for themselves. Mālik condemned this and stated that it was among the innovations that neither the Companions nor those who followed them in righteousness had practised. He said, “Nothing will set the later generations of this community aright except what set its first generations aright.”

There is no doubt that the matter is as Mālik stated. The mass-transmitted reports from the Companions and their successors show that this was neither their practice nor their custom. Had facing the burial chamber when supplicating been prescribed, they would have known this better and would have preceded later generations in doing so. The person supplicating invokes Allah alone. Facing the burial chamber while supplicating to Allah Most High has been forbidden, just as facing it while praying to Allah Most High has been forbidden, as established in Sahīh Muslim and elsewhere on the authority of Abū Marthad