ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad said: I heard my father say, “I wish I could come out of this affair breaking even—nothing held against me and nothing credited to me.”
Al-Marwadhī related: I brought Ibrāhīm al-Ḥuṣrī—he was a righteous man—into the presence of Abū ʿAbd Allāh. Ibrāhīm said, “My mother saw a dream about you—such and such—and she mentioned Paradise.” Aḥmad replied, “My brother, people used to tell Sahl ibn Salāmah the same kind of thing, and he ended up shedding blood. A dream pleases the believer, but it must not mislead him.”
Al-Marwadhī also said: During his final illness Abū ʿAbd Allāh urinated pure, fresh blood. I showed it to a physician, who said, “This is a man whose grief—or whose fear—has torn his insides apart.”
He further reported: I asked Aḥmad, “How are you this morning?” He answered, “How should the one feel whose Lord demands that he fulfill the obligatory duties, whose Prophet requires him to follow the sunnah, whose two recording angels seek the soundness of his deeds, whose own soul pulls him toward its desires, whose Iblīs urges him to indecency, whose angel of death is watching to seize his spirit, and whose dependants are pressing him for provision?!”
Al-Khallāl narrates from al-Marwadhī: I was walking with Abū ʿAbd Allāh leaning on my arm when we met a woman carrying a ṭunbūr (lute). I took it from her, smashed it, and began to trample on it while Abū ʿAbd Allāh stood with his head lowered. He said nothing, though news of the broken lute quickly spread. Abū ʿAbd Allāh then remarked, “I did not even know until this moment that you had smashed a lute.”
Al-Maymūnī said: Judge Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī told me, “Aḥmad said to me, ‘Your father is one of six people for whom I pray in the pre-dawn hours.’”
Ibrāhīm ibn Hāniʾ al-Naysābūrī said: “When Abū ʿAbd Allāh was in hiding from the authorities, he stayed with me…” He then related astonishing examples of Aḥmad’s striving in worship, adding, “I could not keep pace with him. He broke his fast on only one day, and he underwent cupping.”