He said, “I saw the Prophet ﷺ deliberately choose to pray there.”
Muslim also relates from Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ that he would intentionally pray at the spot where the Qur’an stand was kept, offering supererogatory prayers there, and that he said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to pick out that very place, and the distance between the pulpit and the qiblah was only wide enough for a sheep to pass.”
Some authors have imagined that this issue is disputed and have lumped it together with the first category, but that is inaccurate. Here the report clearly states that the Prophet ﷺ intentionally sought out the site—so how could such purposeful choice not be recommended?
Granted, staking out a permanent “home base” (iṭān) in the mosque—refusing to pray anywhere except that spot—is forbidden, as the Sunnah makes clear. Yet iṭān differs from merely favoring a place without turning it into an exclusive station.
One must therefore distinguish between following the Prophet ﷺ and adopting his practice in what he actually did, and inventing a bidʿah he never prescribed, simply because it happens to be associated with him.
(1) In manuscripts B, C, and D the wording reads: “and he said.”
(2) See: al-Bukhari, Sahih, Book of Prayer, chapter “Praying toward a pillar,” hadith no. 502 (Fath al-Bari 1:577); Muslim, Sahih, Book of Prayer, chapter “The worshipper’s nearness to a sutrah,” hadith no. 509 (1:364–65).
(3) Muslim, Sahih, same book, chapter, and hadith cited above (1:364) supplies an additional chain for this report.
(4) al-iṭan (literally “making [a spot] a homeland”) means becoming attached to a particular place in the mosque and always praying there. See: Lisan al-Arab, s.v. “watan,” 13:451.
(5) Manuscript Ṭ adds the following marginal note: “The poor servant Dawud the physician says: By ‘iṭan’ I mean reserving a spot in the mosque where one prays and nowhere else; this is one of the innovations of the Jews, for each of their leaders has a place in the synagogue where no one else may sit. If he comes and finds someone there, he makes him rise, and the other rises of his own accord, because it is well known that this spot belongs to so-and-so. Upon them be the curse of Allah, the angels, and all people.” This Dawud the physician is probably Dawud ibn Nasir al-Mosuli, author of several medical works, who died in 726 AH. See: al-Aʿlam, 2:335.