are you going?’
“‘Syria.’
“‘Where are you coming from?’
“‘Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s.’
“‘What were you doing there?’
“‘Asking him a question,’ he said. ‘Aḥmad is one of us, but he knows more than any of us.’
“It was time to pray the sunset prayer, so we did, and then prayed the evening prayer. When he finished, I said, ‘Have some of this fish; we catch it ourselves.’109
“‘We don’t eat,’ he replied, and then vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up.”
[Al-Marrūdhī:] One day a renunciant approached us, and I took him in to see Aḥmad. He was wearing a ragged cloak of fur and a scrap of cloth on his head, and wore no shoes despite the bitter cold. Ibn Ḥanbal greeted him and he replied, “I’ve come a long way, but all I want to do is pay my respects. I’m heading for ʿAbbādān, and if I return from there, I’d like to come and see you again.” 18.3
“If you return, then,” said Ibn Ḥanbal.
The man rose and said good-bye to Aḥmad who was sitting down.
It was the only time I ever saw anyone get up and leave before Aḥmad had stood up.
“He looks like one of the Substitutes, doesn’t he?” said Aḥmad; or perhaps, “He makes me think of the Substitutes.”
Then he brought some food—four loaves split and filled with fermented grain paste110—out to him. “If I had anything more to give you,” he said, “I would.”
[Ismāʿīl al-Daylamī:] I was at Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s when someone knocked on the door. I went out to see who it was and found a young man wearing a ragged hair shirt. 18.4
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal,” he said.
When I told Aḥmad that there was a young man in a ragged hair shirt asking for him, he went out and greeted him.
“Aḥmad,” the man said, “tell me what renunciation of the world means.”
“I heard Sufyān report, citing al-Zuhrī, that renunciation of the world means not taking anything for granted.”
“Tell me more,” said the young man, who was standing in the sun even though there was a patch of shade directly in front of him.
“It means never being sure that if you leave the sun you’ll live long enough to reach the shade.”
The man turned to leave, but Aḥmad said, “Wait!” He went into the house and came back holding out a little bundle.
“I don’t count on living long enough to reach the shade,” said the man. “What would I need that for?”
Then he turned and walked away.
[Aḥmad:] Early one morning I went out and came across a man with a cloth over his face. He handed me a slip of paper. When the light had grown strong enough to see by, I took it out and read what was written on it: 18.5
For each delight, the world brings a grief
To the pauper’s hut and the rich man’s gate;
While those who study
Seek not to learn,
But to vaunt, and vex their peers with vain debate.111
I thought it must have been Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā l-Dhuhlī who had handed me the paper. Later, though, I found Muḥammad and asked him about it, and he said, “I never saw you and I never gave you a piece of paper.”
It was then that I realized that the poem had been an admonition.
HIS FAME
In the chapter about his childhood, we noted that Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was highly regarded even as a youth. 19.1
[Al-Marrūdhī:] I once said to Aḥmad, “There are a lot of people praying for you.”
“That frightens me,” he said. “It could be a temptation to think highly of myself. Why do they do it?”
I once told him that I had met a man from Tarsus who said that he had been fighting the Byzantines. In the still of the night, he told me, the men would call out “Pray to God for Abū ʿAbd Allāh!” He went on: “We would pull back the arm of the mangonel112 and then release it. Once we shot a stone at a barbarian113 standing on a rampart behind his shield, and the stone knocked off his head and the shield both.”114
Aḥmad’s face fell, and he said, “If only it weren’t a temptation!”
Then he said, “Do you think it’s a temptation?”
“Of course not,” I answered.
[Al-Abbār:] We’d been marching along the Balkh River for several days when our provisions ran out, so two of us headed off toward Bukhārā to buy something to eat. On the way we met a blond-haired, red-faced man who asked us where we were from. When we told him we were from Baghdad, he asked, “How is Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal?” 19.2
“When we left, he was alive and well.”
The man raised his head and prayed to God for Aḥmad’s well-being.
“Now I’ve seen it all,” I said to my companion. “Even here, on the frontier of Islam, among the Turks!”
[Al-Marrūdhī:] I once told Aḥmad that someone had said that from here as far as the land of the Turks, people were praying for his well-being. I asked him how he showed his gratitude for the popularity God had blessed him with. 19.3
“I pray to God that I do nothing for the sake of appearances,” he said.
[ʿAbd Allāh:] Bilāl and I went to see Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al-Tirmidhī, who told us, “A group of us were at Wahb ibn Jarīr’s. Aḥmad was there too. He asked me to read,115 but I didn’t.” 19.4
We asked him why not.
“I didn’t want to read because Aḥmad might say something, or show some kind of reaction, and people would start talking about it.”
[Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn:] I heard a man from Khurasan say, “Back home people think Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal isn’t human. They think he’s some kind of angel.” 19.5
I also heard
