His pulpit had three steps (1). Before it was made, he would deliver the sermon while leaning against a tree trunk. When he moved to the pulpit, the trunk cried out with longing, and those in the mosque heard it. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, came down to it and embraced it. Anas (2) said: “It cried because it missed the revelation it used to hear” (3).
The pulpit was not placed in the middle of the mosque, but on its western side, close to the wall. Between it and the wall was enough space for a sheep to pass (4).
Whenever he sat on it outside the Friday prayer, or stood to deliver the Friday sermon, his Companions would turn to face him. Thus, during the sermon, his face was the direction they faced (5).
He would stand and deliver the sermon, then sit briefly, then stand and deliver
(1) Reported by Muslim (544), from Sahl ibn Sa‘d.
(2) Reported by al-Bukhārī (3584; see also 918, 2095, 3585), from Jābir ibn ‘Abd Allāh. The speaker is Jābir, not Anas. The wording in (2095) is: “It wept for the remembrance it used to hear.” Al-Hāfiz states in al-Fath (4:319): “The subject of ‘said’ may be the narrator of the hadith—meaning Jābir—but Wakī‘ explicitly states, in his narration from ‘Abd al-Wāhid ibn Ayman, that it was the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Ahmad [14206] and Ibn Abī Shayba [32407] reported it from him.”
(3) In the margins of manuscripts mīm and nūn: “and its loss of the Prophet’s contact with it,” accompanied by the mark sahh (correct). The same phrase appears in the main text of qāf after the word “revelation,” but without “with it.” It also appears in the printed editions. I doubt that this phrase belongs to the main text, since it does not fit the context; the marginal wording is neither Anas’s nor Jābir’s.
(4) Reported by al-Bukhārī (497) and Muslim (509/263), from Salama ibn al-Akwa‘. The wording is Abū Dāwūd’s (1082).
(5) See the hadith of Abū Sa‘īd in Sahīh al-Bukhārī (921) and Sahīh Muslim (1052). Al-Bukhārī placed it in his Sahīh under the heading: “Chapter: The imam facing the people, and the people facing the imam when he delivers the sermon …”