and he began to bellow like a bull, crying, “Take me back to the oven!” His wives and close attendants gathered, carried him once more to the furnace, and pinned their hopes on some relief. When the heat rose, his shouting subsided, the blisters split open, and he was brought out—charred, blackened, and he passed away within the hour.

I (the author) say: I do not know the chain of this report.

• Jarīr ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Duʿād relates that his father said, “I never saw a man with a stronger heart than this one—meaning Aḥmad. We kept speaking to him, the Caliph kept speaking to him, at times calling him by name and at times by his kunya, while he replied, ‘Commander of the Faithful, show me something from the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger so that I may accept it.’ ”

• Abū Yaʿqūb al-Qarrāb reported to us, saying: Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Faḍl told us; Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ṣarrām told us; Ibrāhīm ibn Isḥāq narrated to us; al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Jarawī told me: “Al-Ḥārith ibn Miskīn and I entered upon Aḥmad shortly after he had been beaten. He said to us, ‘I was struck and fell unconscious, and I heard that man—meaning Ibn Abī Duʿād—say, “Commander of the Faithful, by Allah, he is astray and misguides others.” ’ ”

Al-Ḥārith then said to him, “Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar related to me from Mālik that al-Zuhrī was denounced until he was whipped, and it is said his books were hung around his neck. Mālik also said: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib was beaten, his head and beard were shaved; Abū al-Zinād was flogged; Muḥammad ibn al-Munkadir and some of his companions were scourged with whips in a bathhouse.” Mālik did not mention himself, and Aḥmad admired al-Ḥārith’s remark.

• Makkī ibn ʿAbdān said: “Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān had Mālik lashed ninety strokes in the year 147 AH.”

• It is also related from Muḥammad ibn Abī Samīnah, from Shābāṣ al-Tāʾib, who said, “Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was struck with eighty lashes; had you laid them on an elephant they would have crushed it.”

• Al-Bayhaqī: al-Ḥākim informed us; Ḥassān ibn Muḥammad the jurist narrated to us; I heard