Zaid b. Thabit said that God’s Messenger made an apartment of reed mats in the mosque and prayed in it for some nights until people gathered round him. One night when they missed his voice and thought he had gone to sleep, some of them began to clear their throats in order that he might come out to them, so he said, “What I have seen you doing has continued to be your practice, so that I have been afraid that it might be prescribed for you, and if it were prescribed for you you would not fulfil it. You people should therefore pray in your houses, for, with the exception of the prescribed prayer, the most excellent prayer a man observes is that which he observes in his house.”
Anas b. Malik was asked about standing in humble supplication and replied, “God’s Messenger stood in humble supplication after bowing.” A version has “before and after bowing.”
Abu Huraira said that God’s Messenger used to commend prayer at night in Ramadan, but did not command it as a duty. He would say, “If anyone prays during the night in Ramadan because of faith and seeking his reward from God, his former sins will be forgiven him.” When God’s Messenger died this was the practice, and it continued thus during Abu Bakr’s Caliphate and the early part of ‘Umar’s.
Al-Hasan said that ‘Umar b. al-Khattab congregated the people with Ubayy b. Ka‘b as imam and he led them in prayer for twenty nights, but led them in humble supplication only in the second half. When the last ten days came he withdrew and prayed in his house, and the people were saying, “Ubayy has run away.”
