ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sāmī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Baghawī, and a host of others besides them.
Abū Muḥammad al-Khallāl even compiled a small treatise enumerating everyone who narrated from Aḥmad. We heard this work—from al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, from Jaʿfar, from al-Salafī, from Jaʿfar al-Sarrāj, from al-Khallāl himself—in which he included Wakiʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ and Yaḥyā ibn Ādam.
Al-Khaṭīb said in his book al-Sābiq: “Abū Saʿīd al-Ṣayrafī informed us; al-Aṣamm narrated to us; al-Rabīʿ narrated to us; al-Shāfiʿī informed us; a reliable authority among our colleagues informed us, from Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, from Shuʿbah, from Qays ibn Muslim, from Ṭāriq, that ʿUmar said, ‘Booty belongs only to those who were present at the battle.’ (1)”
Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: Abū Zurʿah told us that Aḥmad’s lineage goes back to Baṣrah, although his home district was in Marw. Ṣāliḥ also related to us, saying, “I heard my father say:
‘When Hushaym died I travelled to Kūfah in 183 AH. My first journey to Baṣrah was in 186, and I set out to visit Sufyān in 187; when we arrived, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ had already passed away.
I have performed the pilgrimage five times, three of them on foot; on one of those occasions I spent no more than thirty dirhams.
Ibn al-Mubārak came in 179 AH, and that same year I first heard ḥadith from Hushaym. I went to Ibn al-Mubārak’s gathering, but they said, “He has left for Ṭarsūs.” I nonetheless wrote down from Hushaym more than three thousand reports.
Had I possessed fifty dirhams, I would have travelled to Jarīr in Rayy’—and I (the author) remark: he did in fact hear some ḥadith from him—.
He also said, ‘I wrote down (ḥadith) from Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd on wooden tablets and prayed behind him more than once; he would conclude the prayer with a single salām.’
Among Aḥmad’s teachers who transmitted from him is Ibn Mahdī.
I read before Ismāʿīl ibn al-Farrāʾ: Ibn Qudāmah informed us; al-Mubārak ibn …”