Abū Bakr is told to lead the prayer

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Around the fifth day of his sickness, six or seven days before he passed, he asked for buckets of water from a particular well known for how cool and sweet it was (for well-water, unlike our tap water, each had its own character), and they poured them over him, bucket after bucket, to bring the fever down; then he bound a turban tight around his head to ease its throbbing, and, unable even to walk, was carried between two men, al-ʿAbbās his uncle and ʿAlī his cousin and son-in-law, who were there helping to the very end, out to the masjid and set upon the minbar, too weak to stand upon it. By now the city was gripped: he had never in his life been sick like this, never a fever that kept him from praying and being among his Ṣaḥābah as he used to, and the news spread until people camped in the masjid, unable to rest, sleeping there out of sheer worry, waiting for any word.

❧On the minbar

From the minbar he warned, "may Allāh curse the Jews and the Christians, for they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship", guarding, though the Ṣaḥābah did not yet see the connection, against his own grave becoming a masjid, a place people would prostrate toward. He called for anyone he owed a debt or a right to claim it now, before the Day of Judgment, and even said, "if I have ever struck anyone unjustly, here is my back, take your retaliation now." He kept asking and asking, until one man, embarrassed, said, "O Messenger of Allāh, you owe me three dinars; I would not have spoken but for your insisting", a beggar had once passed and the Prophet ﷺ had said "who will give him on my behalf?" and this man had, and been forgotten, and the Prophet ﷺ ordered him paid; a trivial sum, long forgiven, mentioned only from the awe of the moment. And he said that a servant from among the servants of Allāh had been given the choice between this world and his Lord, and had chosen his Lord.

❧Abū Bakr understands

He said it in the third person, so the Ṣaḥābah rejoiced for that fortunate servant, all but one, Abū Bakr, who understood that this was none other than the Prophet ﷺ, and wept aloud, to the bafflement of the rest. The Prophet ﷺ looked at him before the whole masjid and said, "do not weep, O Abū Bakr; you are the one I trust most in companionship and in my family, and were I to take a khalīl, a closest intimate, from mankind, it would be Abū Bakr; but Allāh has taken me as His khalīl, so I cannot take you as mine", for the khalīl of Allāh is Ibrāhīm, and the Prophet ﷺ too, "yet between us is the brotherhood of Islam." Then he decreed that every private door opening from the Companions' houses into the masjid be shut, for it had been lawful until then for those living beside it to have their own doors in, and none was left open but the door of Abū Bakr's dwelling beside the masjid: an honour, and a clear sign that Abū Bakr had been chosen and preferred above them all.

❧"Allāh will accept none but Abū Bakr"

The transfer of the prayer to Abū Bakr came a day or two later, many say on a Thursday, though the shaykh leans to the Friday, since it fits that the very talk just mentioned was the Jumuʿah sermon, and no one remarks on anyone else having given the khuṭbah. That final loud prayer he led in public, he recited Sūrat al-Mursalāt. Then, when ʿishāʾ came and Bilāl called that it was time, he rose to lead and fainted onto his bed; water was poured, he rose again and fainted longer; he came to and asked, "have the people prayed?", "no, they await you, O Messenger of Allāh", and tried again, and again his knees gave way, by one report seven times, until he saw he could not. How, the shaykh asks, is the prayer stressed even in his final days, is it not shameful for us to read this and not be moved to guard our own? At last he said, "tell Abū Bakr to lead the people." And this was the first explicit indication of who would take charge: for ten years in Medina no one had led the prayer while the Prophet ﷺ was present in the city.

❧"You are like the women of Yūsuf"

ʿĀʾishah, whom he told, did not want her father to lead, not from any lie, but out of an overzealous protection of him: she feared people would think Abū Bakr had pushed himself forward, and dreaded that his leading the prayer would forever bind his name, in their minds, to the Prophet's ﷺ death. So she gave an excuse, "my father is soft of heart; when he stands to pray and recites, he weeps, and the people will not hear him; find someone else", and, Abū Bakr being away just then, stalled, and brought in Ḥafṣah to press the same. But he saw through it from his sickbed: "you are like the women around Yūsuf", you conspire and think it unseen, "go, call Abū Bakr, for Allāh and His Messenger will accept none but Abū Bakr." And when ʿUmar's voice once began the prayer instead, the Prophet ﷺ heard it and said again, "no, call Abū Bakr; Allāh and His Messenger will accept none but Abū Bakr," until they found him and he led. He would not name a successor outright, for that would have made it the binding custom of kings and politicians, and would have narrowed to one path what Allāh left open (Abū Bakr chosen one way, ʿUmar another, ʿUthmān a third, ʿAlī a fourth, all valid), so instead he gave every indication he could, short of the explicit word, that Abū Bakr was the one they should follow.