and when Aḥmad came forward, Ibn Mahdī remarked, “Whoever wishes to behold the very form that lay between Sufyān al-Thawrī’s shoulders, let him look at this man.”

Al-Marwadhī relates: Aḥmad said, “I was so intent on the hadith of Sufyān that I wrote it down from two transmitters. Later we spoke with Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, who interceded for us with al-Ashjaʿī; he would bring out his notebooks, and we would copy from them without an oral hearing.”

It is also reported from Ibn Mahdī that he said, “Whenever my eyes fall on Aḥmad, I am reminded of Sufyān.”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad said: I heard my father state, “Wakīʿ differed with Ibn Mahdī in roughly sixty hadiths of Sufyān. I mentioned that to Ibn Mahdī, and he would later quote it on my authority.”

ʿAbbās al-Dūrī narrates: I heard Abū ʿĀṣim say to a Baghdadi, “Whom do you consider your leading hadith scholars today?”

The man replied, “With us are Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Abū Khaythama, al-Muʿayṭī, al-Suwaydī…”—and he went on to list others in Kūfa and in Basra as well.

Abū ʿĀṣim responded, “I have met every one you have named, and they have all come to me; I have not seen the like of that young man”—meaning Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.

Shujāʿ ibn Makhlad reports: I heard Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī say, “In the two cities (1) there is no man dearer to me than Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.”

Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb is likewise reported to have said to someone, “Go and ask Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal what he says about such-and-such an issue, for in our estimation he is an imām.”