Aḥmad’s children reported that many people, including certain righteous men who had kept their identities a secret, came to offer their condolences. Without spending too much time on the subject, I will present a few of the more famous accounts. 89.1

[Ibn Abī Ḥātim:] We heard Aḥmad’s son Ṣāliḥ report: 89.2

A few days after my father died, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭāhir received a letter from al-Mutawakkil ordering him to pay us a visit of condolence and to carry off the books. But I gathered up the books first and told him, “All of the reports we’ve ever heard are in here. If you want them, stay here and copy them.”482

“I’ll tell the caliph,” he said.

[Ibn Abī Ḥātim:] Ṣāliḥ kept putting him off and the books stayed in our hands, thank God! [Ṣāliḥ:] One of my friends wrote me this letter of condolence: 89.3

In the name of God, full of compassion, ever-compassionate God, mighty and glorious, has decreed that death deal impartially with humankind, dooming His creatures to a finite span until fate comes to claim them all. Bowing now to God’s decree is Abū ʿAbd Allāh—may God have mercy on him!—whom He has summoned to Himself. Accepting God’s welcome with a willing heart, he came faultless as always, unsullied, and immaculate, firm in tradition, inerrant, and guiding aright, unswerving from the path of good guidance, unswayed by caprice, and dauntless in adversity, until God drew him close to Himself. Let all aspire to the grace that he has gained; and though losing him brings a wrenching grief that bites deep into the heart, and I console you and any other Muslim who reads this letter by reminding you of God’s promised blessings, mercies, and signs vouchsafed to those who ponder well, suffer long, and submit with good grace to the fate God has decreed for all things He has made. I remind you that he left us in the best possible way: present in mind, confident of God’s guidance, and unshaken in his courage and resolve. The world pursued him but he spurned it, and he brooked no rebuke when he stood up for God; his passing leaves a ragged scar on the heart of Islam.

I pray to God, who gives freely of His bounty, to bless Muḥammad, His servant and Emissary; and to grant Aḥmad no lesser reward than that He grants to any of the allies He has created to serve Him. May He raise him in rank, exalt him in standing, and seat him among the prophets, the truth-tellers, the martyrs, and the saints—goodly companions all! I ask God to give you strength, and the reward promised to the strong; and grant you that certainty that confers the reward promised to those who live out their faith. I ask Him, for He is the fount of all blessing, the dispenser of all good things, and the One for whom nothing is impossible.

[Al-Ṣūfī:] The night we buried Abū ʿAbd Allāh, one of our scholars—a kindly, learned man named Abū Jaʿfar—asked me, “Do you know who was buried today?” 89.4

“Who?” “The sixth of five.” “What do you mean?” “The first is Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq,” he said. “The second was ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān was the third, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib the fourth, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al- ʿAzīz the fifth, and now we have a sixth: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.” I appreciated his saying that. What he meant was that each man was the greatest in his own time.