The Minbar And The Friday Sermon

A minbar is the raised pulpit from which the imam delivers the khutba, the sermon that precedes the communal Friday prayer, and it stands to the right of the mihrab at the front of the prayer hall. Its basic form is a staircase, traditionally of an odd number of steps, rising to a small platform or seat beneath a canopy; the preacher customarily stops partway up rather than occupying the top step, a gesture of humility said to follow the practice of the early caliphs, who declined to stand as high as the Prophet himself was remembered to have stood. Early minbars were simple, portable wooden structures, and tradition credits the Prophet Muhammad's own minbar at Medina, said to have had only three steps, as the model the form elaborated from over the following centuries.

In later congregational mosques the minbar became a focus of decorative ambition in its own right, carved in wood with geometric strapwork and inlaid ivory or bone in Mamluk Egypt, or built in marble in Ottoman Turkey with a slender fretwork balustrade running up each side of the staircase. Because the khutba is delivered only at the Friday noon prayer and the two annual Eid festivals, the minbar sees far less use than the mihrab, and in some mosques it remains a wheeled or movable piece brought out only for those occasions.