The Life Of Ibn Hanbal by Ibn Al-Jawzi

[Al-Walīd al-Naḥwī:] Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was a handsome man of medium height. He dyed his hair lightly with henna, leaving some black hairs in his beard. His clothing was coarse but white. When I saw him he was wearing a turban and a breechclout. 35.1

[ʿAbd Allāh:] My father began dyeing his hair and beard with henna when he was sixty-three. 35.2

[Al-Sijistānī:] Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal never joined people in talking about the things that most of them care about, but whenever Hadith was mentioned he would speak. 35.3

[Al-ʿUkbarī:] When I saw Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, he was a tall old man with dyed hair and very dark skin. 35.4

[Al-Marrūdhī:] When Aḥmad was at home, he usually sat knees to the chest with his head bowed humbly before God. When he was outside, though, the humility was not so easy to see as it was when he was inside. I would come in and find him reading from a quire he held in his hand. When I sat down, he would close it and put it down in front of him. 35.5

[Khaṭṭāb ibn Bishr:] I was sitting in Aḥmad’s mosque with Abū Bakr al-Marrūdhī trading Hadith reports when Abū Bakr heard the door open and jumped up. There was Aḥmad, sticking his head out. 35.6

“Go look and see where Ḥasan’s gotten to,” he said, meaning his little boy.

“The boy’s really got the poor man worried,” I thought to myself. The time was midday, and it was summer.

Abū Bakr went into one of the houses where the weavers lived, found the boy, and brought him out. He told him where I was, and he told me to come in.193

I went into the entryway and found Aḥmad sitting on the dirt floor. The dye in his hair had run, and I could see the white roots of his hair. He was wearing a small, dirty breechclout of white cotton and a coarse shirt with a smudge on the shoulder and sweat stains on the collar.

I asked him a question about being scrupulous and the lawfulness of earning a living. No sooner had I asked the question than I saw his face fall and assume such a sorrowful expression of self-contempt that it pained me to look at him. As I left, I said to someone who was with me, “Some days he seems so dissatisfied with himself.” [Ismāʿīl:] Upwards of five thousand people used to come hear Aḥmad speak.

Fewer than five hundred of them came to write down Hadith: the rest were there to study his manners and his bearing. 35.7

[Al-Muṭṭawwiʿī:] For twelve years I went to see Aḥmad read his Authenticated Reports to his children. I never wrote down a single report: I was there to follow his example, study his ethics, and observe his manners. 35.8

[Al-Būshanjī:] I saw Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal sit only one way—knees to the chest— except when he was praying. That’s the way of sitting that Qaylah describes in the Hadith report where she says, “I saw the Emissary of God sitting knees to the chest, like a man making himself humble before God.” He used to perform his ablutions with sand while sitting in that position, which is the most timid before God. It means sitting on one’s behind with the knees to the chest and feet flat on the floor. Sometimes he would put his arm around his legs. No posture is more timid than that. 35.9

[Muḥammad ibn Yūnus:] We heard al-Ruʾāsī report: “Of all the Emissary’s Companions, none was closer to him in his example, his bearing, and his carriage than ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd. In the next generation, the one who most resembled Ibn Masʿūd was ʿAlqamah ibn Qays. After ʿAlqamah, the one who most resembled him was Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī. After al-Nakhaʿī, the one who most resembled him was Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir. After Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir, the one who most resembled him was Sufyān al-Thawrī. After Sufyān, the one who most resembled him was Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ.” 35.10

And the one closest to Wakīʿ was Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.

[Al-Ḥasan ibn al-Rabīʿ:] In his example and his bearing, the only person I can compare Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal to is Ibn al-Mubārak. 35.11