Al-Khallāl records a number of anecdotes illustrating Aḥmad’s keen mind, his conduct while still in the kuttab, and the scrupulous restraint he displayed even as a child.

Al-Marwadhī narrated: “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh say, ‘Hushaym died when I was twenty years old, so I set off together with “the Bedouin”-—a travelling companion of Abū ʿAbd Allāh—who related:

‘We started out on foot and eventually reached Kūfah—this was in 183 AH. We came to Abū Muʿāwiyah while a large crowd was gathered around him. He gave the Bedouin a stipend for Hajj amounting to sixty dirhams; the man left, abandoning me alone in a room. I felt desolate, for I had nothing with me except a satchel containing my books. I would place the satchel on a single brick and rest my head upon it.

I used to revise with Wakīʿ the hadiths of al-Thawrī. On one occasion he mentioned something and asked, “Is this found with Hushaym?” I said, “No.”

At times he would cite ten hadiths in succession, I would memorise them all, and when he stood up the people would turn to me and I would dictate the hadiths to them.’”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad also related to us: my father said to me, “Choose any volume you wish from Wakīʿ’s compilations. If you like, ask me for the text (matn) and I will supply you with the chain of transmission (isnād); or, if you prefer, give me the isnād and I will give you the matn.”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad went on: “I heard Sufyān ibn Wakīʿ say, ‘I have retained from your father a ruling for nearly forty years. He was asked about the validity of a divorce pronounced before marriage, and he replied: “It is transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ, from ʿAlī, from Ibn ʿAbbās, and from more than twenty of the Successors, and none of them considered it objectionable.” I later asked my father about this and he said, “Sufyān is right; that is exactly what I said.”’

He added, ‘I remember hearing Abū Bakr ibn Ḥammād say: I heard Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah declare, “No one ever asks Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ‘On what basis did you say that?’”’

And I heard Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī relate, on the authority of Ibn Numayr: ‘I was sitting with Wakīʿ when a man—or, he said, a group of men—from the followers of Abū Ḥanīfah came to him and said, “There is a Baghdadi here who is criticising some of the scholars of Kūfah.” Wakīʿ did not recognise the man, and while we were in that state…’