The Life Of Ibn Hanbal by Ibn Al-Jawzi

[Al-Haytham ibn Khalaf:] We buried Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal in 241, after the afternoon prayer. I never saw so many people in one place. 83.1

[Al-Qanṭarī:] I’ve seen forty pilgrimages but never so many people as I did then. 83.2

[Al-Warrāq:] We’ve never heard of more people gathering in one place, whether in the Age of Ignorance or in the Age of Islam. We’ve even heard that the place was surveyed and a proper estimate made of the number of people there. It came to about a million, plus the sixty thousand or so women I counted looking on from the walls.

People had opened the gates of the houses all along the streets and alleys to anyone who wanted to come in and do their ablutions. People also bought great quantities of drinking water. 83.3

[Al-Baghawī:] Bunān ibn Aḥmad al-Qaṣabānī told us that he was present for the funeral of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. 83.4

“There were people lined up from the square as far as the bridge at Bāb al-Qaṭīʿah.

The estimates I heard were of eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women.” [Mūsā ibn Hārūn:] The flat tracts of land where people stood after Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal died were surveyed and the number of people present was calculated to have been more than six hundred thousand, not counting the ones off to the side, around the edges, on the roofs, and scattered around, who if counted would have brought the total to more than a million. 83.5

[Al-Warrāq:] Not counting a certain funeral that took place among the Children of Israel, we have never heard of there being more Muslims gathered in one place than there were for Ibn Ḥanbal’s funeral procession. 83.6

[Al-Fatḥ ibn al-Ḥajjāj?:] The Commander of the Faithful sent twenty men to estimate how many people prayed over Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. They counted 1,300,000, plus the people who were on boats. 83.7

[Abū Zurʿah:] I heard that al-Mutawakkil ordered a survey of the area where people were standing while the funeral prayer was said for Aḥmad. It turned out there was room for 2,500,000 people. 83.8

[Al-Ḥasan al-Maqāniʿī:] I was in Baghdad, alone in an orchard belonging to a friend, when I saw two men—one old, one young—dressed in ragged hair shirts. I greeted them and said, “You look like strangers here.” 83.9

“We are,” they said. “We’re from the Lukkām Mountains479 and we’re here for Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s funeral. Every one of God’s friends has come to see it.” [Al-Sulamī:] Abū l-Ḥasan al-Dāraquṭnī and I attended the funeral of Abū l-Fatḥ al-Qawwās the renunciant. Seeing the crowd, al-Dāraquṭnī said, “I’ve heard Abū Sahl ibn Ziyād al-Qaṭṭān say that he heard ʿAbd Allāh, son of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, say that he heard his father say: ‘Tell the innovators that if we compare funerals, we win.’” 83.10