For this reason, the four imams and others unanimously agreed that, after greeting him, anyone who wishes to supplicate should face the qibla and supplicate, rather than supplicating while facing the grave.

One group, including Abū Hanīfa, further said:

“When greeting him, one should also face the qibla, turning so that the grave is on one’s left.”

The majority—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, and others—said instead: When greeting him, one should face the grave with one’s back toward the Kaaba. When supplicating, however, one supplicates to Allah alone, just as one performs prayer for Allah alone, and therefore faces the qibla—just as one faces it when supplicating at Arafah, al-Safā, al-Marwa, and the Jamarāt.

Mālik ibn Anas and others disliked a person saying, “I visited the grave of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace.” This was because that wording might be intended to denote the prohibited, innovated form of visitation, such as visiting in order to ask him to fulfil one’s needs. They therefore disliked the use of an expression that had come to carry shirk through the corrupt meanings people had newly attached to it. There is, however, no objection to the word “visitation” when what is intended is visitation prescribed by Islam. Mālik stated that he had never seen any of the early generations stand at the grave of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—to supplicate for themselves, or engage in other innovations of this kind.

He said:

“The latter generations of this ummah will be set aright only by what set its earliest generations aright.”

Mālik had met the Successors in Medina and elsewhere, and at that time they were the people most knowledgeable about what was due to Allah and what was due to His Messenger.

If this applies (1) in the case of the best of Allah’s creation, the one most honored by Allah, the master of the children of Adam, the bearer of the Banner of Praise—beneath whose banner Adam and all who came after him will stand on the Day of Resurrection—the spokesman for the prophets when they come before their Lord, the leader of the prophets when they assemble, and the possessor of the Praiseworthy Station on the Day of Resurrection, which all people, from the earliest to the latest, will wish they had attained,