The General Bay'ah and Abu Bakr's First Sermon

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The private bayʿah at the Saqīfah settled the matter among the senior Muhājirūn and Anṣār within hours of the death, a mark of how grave the need for a leader was. Then word went out for the people to come the next day, Tuesday the 13th, to give the general bayʿah, barely twenty-four hours after the Prophet ﷺ died, his body still in ʿĀʾishah's house, not yet buried.

❧Umar sets the record straight

Abū Bakr sat on the minbar, and ʿUmar rose first to introduce him, and to undo his own words of the day before, when in his grief he had drawn his sword and denied the Prophet ﷺ had died at all, saying he had only gone to his Lord and would return. Now ʿUmar said: what I said yesterday I found neither in the Book of Allah nor from the Prophet ﷺ; I had thought he would outlast us all and be the last of us to go, but Allah has left you His Book, and in it the guidance of His Messenger ﷺ, so hold to it. Allah has gathered your affair upon the best of you, the Companion of the Messenger of Allah, the second of the two in the cave, so rise and give him your bayʿah. And the people rose and pledged, one after another.

❧The first khutbah

When all had pledged, Abū Bakr rose and gave a khuṭbah of a few lines, the shaykh calls it the most powerful ever given by any political leader after the Prophet ﷺ:

"O people, I have been put in charge of you, though I am not the best of you. If I do well, help me; if I do ill, correct me. Truthfulness is a trust, and lying a betrayal. The weak among you is strong in my sight until I secure his right for him, and the strong among you is weak in my sight until I take from him what is due. No people abandon striving in the way of Allah but Allah strikes them with humiliation; and never does lewdness spread among a people but Allah envelops them in punishment. Obey me so long as I obey Allah and His Messenger; but if I disobey Allah and His Messenger, you owe me no obedience. Rise to your prayer, may Allah have mercy on you."

After this the body of the Prophet ﷺ was washed and prepared, and the people prayed over him in such numbers, group after group, that the burial was not completed until late that night, Tuesday night, which in the Islamic reckoning is the eve of Wednesday. So within less than a day of his passing the whole matter of the succession was settled, and he ﷺ was laid in the grave where he had died.