The mosque of Kufah and its virtue

Habbah (may Allah have mercy on him) said that a man came to Sayyiduna Ali bin Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him) and said: "I have bought a camel, I have prepared my provisions for the journey, and I intend to go to Bayt al-Maqdis." He (may Allah be pleased with him) said: "Sell your camel and pray in this mosque." Abu Bakr (Ibn Abi Shaybah) said: That is, the mosque of Kufah. "For after the Sacred Mosque there is no mosque dearer to me than this one. Five hundred cubits have been taken away from what was originally founded of it."

Al-Aswad (may Allah have mercy on him) said: "Ka'b met me in Bayt al-Maqdis and asked: 'Where have you come from?' I said: 'From the congregational mosque of Kufah.' He said: 'That I should have come from where you have come is dearer to me than giving two thousand dinars in charity, placing each dinar of them in the hand of each poor person.' Then he swore an oath and said: 'That mosque is at the very middle of the earth, like the bottom of a basin.'"