only a handful of days. I would not trade poverty for anything, and if I could find a way I would slip away so that no one would ever even mention me.
He also said, “I wish I could retreat to some mountain ravine in Mecca where I would be unknown; I have been afflicted with fame, and I yearn for death morning and evening.”
Al-Marwadhī said: It was reported to Aḥmad that a man wanted to meet him, so he replied, “Did not some of the early scholars dislike such meetings—he decks himself out for me and I deck myself out for him?” (1)
He went on, “Now I am at ease; relief did not come to me until I swore that I would no longer narrate hadith. If only we could be left alone—our path is the one Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith followed.”
I said to him, “So-and-so has said that Abū ʿAbd Allāh did not renounce merely silver coins.” He answered, “He renounced people as well.”
Then he added, “And who am I to renounce people? It is people who want to renounce me.”
I heard him declare it disliked for a man to sleep after the ʿAṣr prayer, fearing it would harm his mind (2).
He also said, “Whoever takes up speculative theology (kalām) will never prosper, and he will not escape becoming a Jahmite (3).”
(1) The only gatherings Imam Ahmad disapproved of were those held for self-promotion or ostentatious display. As for meeting people to teach them what they ignore of their religion, to offer them sincere advice, to maintain family ties, or to pay visits on legitimate occasions, he welcomed and encouraged such encounters, for these are commendable and urged by the sacred law. Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated (Musnad, 2/43), as did Ibn Majah (no. 4032) and al-Tirmidhi (no. 2507) with a sound chain, from Ibn Umar: “The believer who mixes with people and patiently bears their harm is better than the believer who neither mixes with people nor bears their harm.”
(2) No reliable textual proof substantiates this point.
(3) Shaykh al-Islam states: The Jahmiyya are of three levels. The worst are the extremists who deny all the divine names and attributes; even when they mention one of the Beautiful Names, they say it is only metaphorical. For them, God is in reality neither living nor knowing, neither powerful nor hearing, nor seeing, nor speaking. The second level is that of the Muʿtazila and the like: they acknowledge the divine names in general but deny the attributes. They too do not affirm all the Beautiful Names literally, considering many of them figurative; these are the Jahmiyya most commonly referred to. The third level are the Sifatiyya, those who affirm the attributes, in opposition to the two previous groups …