—namely, to lead them in the mosque.

Likewise, it has been reliably transmitted that he used to conduct the Friday prayer with a single adhān (call to prayer) and a single iqāmah (second call to stand for the prayer); no adhān was made until he had taken his seat on the minbar (pulpit). The practice remained the same throughout the caliphates of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. Then, midway through ʿUthmān’s rule, when the congregation had grown, he ordered a third call to prayer to be delivered from a house on the east side of the mosque known as al-Zawrāʾ.

It is also mutawātir that his mosque was built of sun-dried bricks, its roof supported by palm-trunk beams, and that the apartments of his wives were situated to the south and east of the mosque. As the population expanded, ʿUmar enlarged the mosque, after which ʿUthmān extended it further and rebuilt it with plaster and dressed stone. Later, during the governorship of al-Walīd, his deputy ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was instructed to purchase those apartments and incorporate them into the mosque. From that point on, the chamber of ʿĀʾishah—in which he himself, along with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, is buried—became part of the mosque. In his lifetime, however, it had stood outside the mosque until the year 91 AH.

And during his final illness he said: