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The witr prayer is not obligatory, for the Prophet ﷺ offered it while riding his mount.
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Whenever a need arises, the Law introduces leniency and facilitation; this is one of Allah’s ongoing kindnesses to His servants.
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Such rulings display the magnanimity of the Sharia and its desire to spur people to increase their acts of obedience by smoothing the path toward them. All praise and favor belong to Allah.
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Al-Ṣanʿānī noted that the wording of this hadith is pieced together from several narrations found in al-Bukhari and Muslim, and that neither of the two Ṣaḥīḥs contains it in exactly this form.
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This hadith cannot be cited to prove that one lowers himself more in prostration than in bowing; that point is established only in the hadith of Jābir, who said, “I came upon him while he was praying on his mount facing the east, and his prostration was lower than his bowing.” Al-Tirmidhi and Abū Dāwūd recorded that report.
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The majority of scholars permit neglecting the qiblah on both long and short journeys. Mālik alone restricted the concession to trips in which the prayers are shortened, and no one agreed with him on that.
Hadith 2
ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ⦗may Allah be pleased with them both⦘ said: “While the people were at Qubāʾ⦗1⦘ performing the dawn prayer, a man came to them and said, ‘Last night Quran was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ, and he has been commanded to face the Kaʿbah.’ So they turned to face it; their faces had been toward Syria, and they pivoted toward the Kaʿbah.”
Overall meaning
As noted earlier, when the Prophet ﷺ migrated to Medina, where many Jews resided, sound wisdom dictated that his qiblah coincide with that of the earlier prophets—Jerusalem. They therefore prayed toward that direction for sixteen or seventeen months⦗2⦘.