The Life Of Ibn Hanbal by Ibn Al-Jawzi

[Al-Marrūdhī:] I heard Aḥmad say, “I didn’t marry until I was forty.” 62.1

[The author:] His first wife was ʿAbbāsah bint al-Faḍl, who was Ṣāliḥ’s mother.

[Al-Khallāl:] Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s grandson Zuhayr dictated the following to us.

“My grandfather, God have mercy on him, married my father’s mother, ʿAbbāsah bint al-Faḍl, an Arab from just outside Medina. She had only one child—my father—and then she died.” 62.2

[Al-Marrūdhī:] I heard Aḥmad say, “Ṣāliḥ’s mother and I lived together for thirty years and never had an argument.”315 62.3

HIS SECOND WIFE, RAYḤĀNAH, ʿABD ALLĀH’S MOTHER316

[Zuhayr:] After Ṣāliḥ’s mother, ʿAbbāsah, died, my father married an Arab woman named Rayḥānah. She bore him only one child: my uncle ʿAbd Allāh. 62.4

[Muḥammad ibn Baḥr:] I heard my uncle report: “When we all gathered to marry Aḥmad and Muḥammad ibn Rayḥān’s sister, her father said to him, ‘Abū ʿAbd Allāh, she’s—’ and laid a finger on his eye, meaning ‘She’s one-eyed.’ 62.5

“Aḥmad said, ‘I knew that.’” [Aḥmad ibn ʿAnbar:] When Ṣālih’s mother died, Aḥmad said to one of the women of the house, “Go to my cousin So-and-So and ask her if she’ll agree to marry me.” 62.6

The cousin reported: “So I went and asked, and she agreed. But when I came back, he asked, ‘Was her sister listening?’ “I told him that the sister”—who was one-eyed—“had been listening. He said, ‘Go back and ask for the one with one eye.’ So I did, and she accepted.” This was ʿAbd Allāh’s mother. After seven years of marriage, she asked him, “Cousin, how do things seem to you? Is there anything you don’t like?” “Nothing,” he answered, “except that those sandals of yours squeak.” Al-Khallāl also said: “I remember Khaṭṭāb ibn Bishr saying that one of Aḥmad’s wives said to him a few days after she came into the household: ‘Is there anything I’m doing wrong?’ 62.7

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘except that those sandals you’re wearing didn’t exist at the time of the Prophet, God bless and keep him.’” So she sold them and bought a maqṭūʿ,317 which she would wear.

Al-Khallāl added that the woman he was talking about is this one: that is, ʿAbd Allāh’s mother.

He also heard al-Marrūdhī say that he heard Aḥmad mention a wife and ask God to have mercy on her. Then he said, “We lived together for twenty years and never had an argument.” That’s this woman: ʿAbd Allāh’s mother.

[The author:] I’ve already quoted Aḥmad as saying that Ṣāliḥ’s mother lived with him for thirty years, and this last report says that he and a wife lived together for twenty. Although both reports are attributed to al-Marrūdhī, one of them must be wrong. Aḥmad did not marry at all until he was forty and did not marry again until after Ṣāliḥ’s mother had died. If he spent thirty years with her and another twenty with the second wife, he would have to have lived for ninety years. Yet he only lived to be seventy-seven. Moreover, he would need to have married ʿAbd Allāh’s mother when he was over seventy, but we know that by the time he died, ʿAbd Allāh was already transmitting his reports and traveling with him. Aḥmad used to say that ʿAbd Allāh— who had already begun seeking Hadith and had heard many teachers while his father was still alive—had a good head for memorizing Hadith. Therefore, I think that the person Aḥmad lived with for twenty years was Ṣāliḥ’s mother—though God knows best. 62.8

These, in any case, are the two wives he is known to have had. We have not heard of a third.