ʿAbd Allāh would never pray inside that mosque; he left it on his left and slightly behind him and prayed ahead of it, facing the ridge itself. Whenever he set off from al-Rauḥā’, he would delay the noon (ẓuhr) prayer until he reached that spot and would perform it there. And when he was returning from Mecca, if he passed by the place about an hour before daybreak—or in the last part of the night—he would bivouac there until he could perform the dawn (ṣubḥ) prayer.
ʿAbd Allāh likewise related that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—used to stop beneath a large lote-tree just short of al-Ruwaythah, on the right-hand side of the road and facing it, in a level gravel plain reached after one descends from a rugged rise roughly two miles before the post station of al-Ruwaythah. The upper part of that tree had broken and bent into its trunk, yet it still stood on a single stem, around whose base many shoots had grown.
He further reported that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—prayed at the edge of a ravine beyond al-ʿArj on the way toward a rocky plateau. Beside that mosque stand two or three graves, each covered with a loose mound of stones, on the right side of the road at a cluster of acacias; it was between those trees that ʿAbd Allāh would leave al-ʿArj after the sun had passed the meridian in the midday heat and perform the noon prayer in that mosque.
He also narrated that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—halted by several acacia trees on the left side of the road in a wadi a little before reaching Harshā. That wadi lies right against the base of Harshā, separated from the road by roughly an arrow’s flight. ʿAbd Allāh would pray toward the acacia nearest the road, which was also the tallest of them.
Another report from ʿAbd Allāh states that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—would stop in the wadi at the very beginning of Marr al-Ẓahrān, coming from the direction of Medina after descending from the Ṣafrawāt hills. He would camp in the floor of that wadi on the left side of the road as one heads toward Mecca, with nothing between his encampment and the road except the distance of a stone’s throw.