day of the conquest of Amorium. On that occasion he said, “He is in ḥill—absolved of the flogging he gave me.”

I also heard my father, Abū Ḥātim, say:

“I visited Abū ʿAbd Allāh three years or so after the beating. The conversation turned to what he had suffered, so I asked him, ‘Has the pain of the lashes left you?’

He stretched out both hands, clasped the wrists of his right and left arms, and said, ‘This.’ It was as though he meant: They were pulled out of place, and he still felt the pain there.”

With this same chain, Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: Muḥammad ibn al-Muthannā, the companion of Bishr, narrated to us:

“Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said: ‘They told me, “Write three sentences and you will be released.”

I replied, “Let me hear them.”

They said, “Write: Allah is eternal—He has always been.”

So I wrote it.

Then they said, “Write: Everything other than Allah is created.”

Next they said, “Write: Allah is the Lord of the Qur’an.”

I said, “As for that one—no,” and I flung down the pen.’”

Bishr ibn al-Ḥārith remarked, “Had he written that last phrase, he would have given them exactly what they were after.”

With this same chain he added: Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥārith al-ʿUbādī—who had journeyed with us in Byzantine territory—said:

“Abū Muḥammad al-Ṭufāwī came to Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and a hadith was mentioned to him. Abū ʿAbd Allāh said, ‘Shall I tell you something comparable to that? When we were being led away, I began to reflect on what we were…’”