Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah

It is narrated from Sayyiduna Taliq bin Ali (may Allah be pleased with him), he says: We came to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) as a delegation, we pledged allegiance to him, prayed with him, and informed him that in our land there is a church of ours. (Since we want to build a mosque there,) we requested from you the leftover water from your ablution. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) called for water, performed ablution, rinsed his mouth, and put it in a vessel, then instructed us: "Go, when you reach your area, demolish the church, sprinkle this water there, and build a mosque there." They said: Our area is very far and it is extremely hot, this water will dry up? The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "(On the way) keep adding more water to it, it will only increase its purity." We set out until we reached our area, we demolished the church, sprinkled the water there, and turned it into a mosque, then we gave the call to prayer there. A priest from the tribe of Banu Tai heard the call to prayer and said: This is indeed the call to truth. Then he went towards a hill and after that incident, we did not see him again.

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.