a brief nap after the ʿIshāʾ prayer, and then would stand until dawn, praying and supplicating.

Ṣāliḥ said: Whenever a man invoked blessings for my father, he would reply, “A believer’s only true refuge is his grave; deeds are judged by their final moments.”

During his last illness my father said, “Bring me the book of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs.” When it was produced he said, “Read to me the report of Layth stating that Ṭāwūs disliked groaning while ill.” From that time on I never heard my father utter a single groan until he died (1).

His son ʿAbd Allāh heard him say, “I once longed for death, yet this matter is harder for me than that. That was the trial of beating and imprisonment, which I could endure; this is the trial of worldly life.”

Aḥmad al-Dawraqī said: When Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal returned from ʿAbd al-Razzāq I saw him in Mecca, pale, the marks of exhaustion plain upon him. I spoke with him, and he said, “It is a small price for what we gained from ʿAbd al-Razzāq.”

ʿAbd Allāh reported that his father said, “We only wrote from ʿAbd al-Razzāq out of his memory in the first sitting; we had gone to him at night and he dictated seventy hadiths to us. He had sat with Maʿmar for nine years and used to record everything he said.”

ʿAbd Allāh also said, “Whoever heard from ʿAbd al-Razzāq after the year 200 AH, his transmission is weak.”

Mūsā ibn Hārūn said: Aḥmad was asked, “Where should we look for the abdal (the spiritual substitutes)?” He fell silent for a while and then said, “If not among the people of hadith, I have no idea.”

Al-Marwadhī said: Whenever Abū ʿAbd Allāh mentioned death, tears would choke him.

He used to say, “Fear prevents me from eating and drinking, and when I remember death every affair of this world seems trivial to me: one kind of food in place of another, one garment in place of another—yet they are only a handful of days….”