Who led the people in the Friday prayer before the death of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)

The questioner : Who led the people in the Friday prayer before the death of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)?

The Shaykh : This question is strange to me at first, but it is valid because the Messenger (peace be upon him) did not lead a single Friday prayer until such a question arises?

The questioner : This is based on the fact that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) died on a Monday, so it is natural that he would have been ill on Friday. But is this a conclusion?

The Shaykh : Such a conclusion is never permissible. As it is established in the two Sahihs, he went out leaning on al-Abbas and Ali, and Abu Bakr was leading the people in prayer. When Abu Bakr saw him, he stepped back, but the Messenger (peace be upon him) gestured to him to remain in his place. The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) went out and led the people in prayer, and Abu Bakr was conveying his takbir to the people. It is not far-fetched that he might have been strong on Friday, delivered the sermon, and led the prayer, and then became ill and died on Monday. Therefore, occupying one’s mind with such inferences that do not lead to a legal ruling is more deserving of rejection than rejecting hypothetical, imaginary issues in which some schools of jurisprudence have become known for expanding and elaborating, such as the Hanafi school, for example, who are cited as an example of imagining rulings that cannot occur. I recall reading in some of their books that if a man dies and leaves behind seventy grandmothers, how much does each of them inherit? Seventy grandmothers! We could reach Adam (peace be upon him). This is pure imagination, and there is much like it, much of it ugly and very ugly. It was stated in a book by some of the Shafi'is: if a man has intercourse with his wife and his organ splits, half of it inside her and half outside, is ghusl obligatory upon him?

The questioner : Who is the author of this statement?

The Shaykh : Should we seek forgiveness for him for your sake? So they imagined scenarios and constructed legal rulings upon them. But here, in a question like this, no legal ruling is derived from it. This is related to history. Perhaps the one who led the Messenger (peace be upon him) in his illness, who was Abu Bakr as is established in the two Sahihs, was the one who delivered the Friday sermon during his illness (peace be upon him), or was it someone else? Whether it was this one or that one, nothing is derived from it. Moreover, history does not state that the Messenger did not pray Friday during the illness of his death.