Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah

Qais bin Talq narrates from his father Sayyiduna Talq that we set out as a delegation of six people towards the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him); five of us belonged to the tribe of Banu Hanifah and one was from Banu Zubay’ah bin Rabi’ah. We reached the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), pledged allegiance to him, and prayed with him. We informed him that there was a church in our land (which we wanted to convert into a mosque), so we requested from him the leftover water from his ablution. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) called for water, performed ablution, rinsed his mouth, then poured that water into a vessel and gave it to us, saying: “Take this water with you. When you reach your land, demolish the church, sprinkle this water there, and build a mosque on that spot.” We said: O Messenger of Allah! Our land is very far, so the water will dry up. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Keep adding water to it; it will only increase its purity.” We set out, but began to argue about who would carry the vessel of water (i.e., no one was willing to give it to another). The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) then assigned turns, so that each man would carry it for one night and one day. Thus, we set out until we reached our land, and we did exactly as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) had commanded. There was a priest from the tribe of Tayy; when we gave the call to prayer, he said: This is the call of truth. (After saying this) he ran away somewhere and was not seen again.