is now situated inside the mosque?’ The reply is as follows: The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—was not buried in the mosque at all; he was buried in his own house, and no mosque was erected over him. Originally, that house adjoined the first row of the mosque. Later, however, the community needed to enlarge the mosque, so they extended it from that side—the side a worshipper faces when turning toward the qiblah. Apparently—and Allah knows best—no other space was available at that time, so they expanded in that direction. The grave therefore remained within a private chamber of the house, separated from the mosque by a wall.

Subsequently, when Allah willed to expose two men who intended to exhume the body of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—either to burn it, display it in a museum, or for some other purpose unknown to us, He caused one of the caliphs to see a warning. A messenger came to that caliph by night and said, ‘Save the Messenger of Allah from the two light-eyed men,’ meaning men with small eyes. The visitor appeared once, twice, and a third time, which alarmed the caliph. Terrified, he hastened from his own land to Madinah. On arriving, he ordered a great banquet to be prepared and said to his governor in Madinah, ‘Invite all the townspeople.’ The governor did so, and the caliph scrutinised those present but found no one matching the description he had seen in the dream. He ordered the invitation repeated a second and a third time, yet still did not see the two men. ‘Why have you not summoned the people of Madinah?’ he asked. The governor replied, ‘I invited them all. Only two strangers remain; they have been staying in the mosque since their arrival and are in retreat there.’ The caliph said, ‘Bring them.’ They were brought, and they matched exactly the description given in the dream. An investigation revealed that, by night, they were tunnelling under the ground and had come close to the grave. The caliph ordered their execution, then commanded that the area around the grave be excavated down to the bedrock, filled with molten lead, and enclosed by three walls. Thus the grave became completely isolated from the mosque: it is not inside the mosque, nor was the mosque built over it. This, then, is the answer to