The merit of the mosque and the chambers

Imam Ahmad reports through Abou Sa’id al-Khoudri that two men disputed over the mosque founded upon piety: a man of the Banu Khudra said it was the mosque of the Messenger of Allah, and a man of the Banu Amr ibn Awf said it was the mosque of Qouba. They came to the Messenger of Allah and asked him, and he said: "It is this mosque," meaning the mosque of the Messenger of Allah, then said: "Therein is much good," meaning the mosque of Qouba. The Tirmidhi reported it and declared it good and authentic. The Tirmidhi and an-Nasa’i report, through Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi Sa’id, from his father, the same dispute.

In the Sahih of Mouslim, through Houmayd al-Kharrat, from Abou Salama ibn Abd ar-Rahman: he asked Abd ar-Rahman ibn Abi Sa’id how his father related the matter of the mosque founded upon piety. He said: my father came to the Messenger of Allah and asked him about the mosque founded upon piety; the Prophet took a handful of pebbles, struck them against the ground, then said: "It is this mosque of yours." Ahmad also reports through Sahl ibn Sa’d the same dispute and answer, and through Ubayy ibn Ka’b that the Prophet said:

"The mosque founded upon piety is this mosque of mine." These multiple routes perhaps approach certainty that it is the mosque of the Messenger: that is also the view of Oumar, of his son Abdallah, of Zayd ibn Thabit and of Sa’id ibn al-Moussayyab, and Ibn Jarir preferred it. Others said there is no incompatibility between the descent of the verse concerning the mosque of Qouba and these hadiths: for the Prophet’s mosque is more worthy still of that description, being one of the three mosques toward which journeys are undertaken, as established in the two Sahihs from Abou Hourayra: "Do not set out on journeys except to three mosques: this mosque of mine, the Sacred Mosque, and the mosque of Bayt al-Maqdis." It is established in the two Sahihs that the Messenger of Allah said: "A prayer in this mosque of mine is better than a thousand prayers elsewhere, except the Sacred Mosque."

In the Mousnad of Ahmad is added, by a good chain: "for that is superior." And in the two Sahihs, from Abou Hourayra: "Between my house and my minbar lies a garden of the gardens of Paradise, and my minbar is upon my pool." The hadiths on the merits of this noble mosque are very many.

It is related that Imam Malik and his companions held that the mosque of Medina is superior to the Sacred Mosque: because the latter was built by Abraham and the former by Mohamed, and Mohamed, it is known, is superior to Abraham. The majority of scholars, however, held the contrary, establishing that the Sacred Mosque is superior: for it stands in a city which Allah declared sacred on the day He created the heavens and the earth, which Abraham the Friend declared sacred, and which Mohamed, seal of the messengers, declared sacred: thus there are gathered in it attributes found in no other. This question has a fuller treatment elsewhere. And upon Allah we call for aid.

There were built for the Messenger of Allah, around his noble mosque, chambers to serve as dwellings for him and his family. They were dwellings low of structure, with narrow courtyards. Al-Hasan al-Basri, who was a boy with his mother Khayra, freedwoman of Oum Salama, said: I could reach the highest ceiling of the chambers of the Prophet with my hand, and he was a big, tall boy. As-Souhayli relates in the Rawd that his dwellings were built of palm branches coated with mud, some of dressed stone, all their roofs of palm branches; he also relates from al-Hasan that the chambers were of hair bound with boards of ar’ar wood. In the Tarikh of the Boukhari, the door of the Prophet was knocked upon with the fingernails: evidence that his doors had no rings. All the chambers were annexed to the mosque after the death of the wives of the Messenger of Allah.

The Waqidi and Ibn Jarir report that when Abdallah ibn Ourayqit ad-Dayli returned to Mecca, the Messenger of Allah and Abou Bakr sent with him Zayd ibn Haritha and Abou Rafi’, freedmen of the Prophet, to bring back their families from Mecca, and entrusted them with two loads and five hundred dirhams to buy camels at Qoudayd. They returned with the two daughters of the Prophet, Fatima and Oum Koulthoum, his two wives Sawda and Aïcha, the mother of the latter Oum Roumane, and the household of the Prophet and of the family of Abou Bakr, in the company of Abdallah ibn Abi Bakr. The camel carrying Aïcha and her mother strayed along the way, and Oum Roumane kept crying: woe to the bride and her mother! Aïcha said: I heard a voice saying: loosen its bit.

I loosened it, and by the permission of Allah it stopped, and Allah delivered us in safety. They encamped at the Sanh, and the Messenger of Allah entered with Aïcha in Shawwal, after eight months. Asma bint Abi Bakr, wife of az-Zoubayr ibn al-Awwam, arrived with them, pregnant to the full term with Abdallah ibn az-Zoubayr, as will be explained at the end of this year.