with drops as large as the mouths of water-skins. They said to him, “Leave the mosque so that we may lock it.” He refused, so they threatened, “Leave, or you will be dragged out by your feet.”

I said, “Peace,” and went out while the rain and thunder raged, not knowing where to place my feet. Suddenly a man came out of his house and said, “You there, where are you going?”

“I do not know,” I replied. He brought me into a house in which there was a brazier (1) of glowing coals, some felt blankets (2), and a table set with food. I ate, and he asked, “Who are you?”

“From Baghdad,” I said.

He asked, “Do you know Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal?”

“I am he,” I answered.

“And I,” he said, “am Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh.”

Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr al-Baradhāʿī said: I heard Abū Zurʿah say, “Ahmad would not allow hadith to be written from Abū Naṣr al-Tammār, nor from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, nor from anyone who was tried and answered (i.e., capitulated).”

Abū ʿAwānah reported: I heard al-Maymūnī say, “It has been conclusively established with me that Ahmad did not (3) attend Abū Naṣr al-Tammār when he died; I take that to be because he had capitulated in the ordeal.”

And from Ḥajjāj ibn al-Shāʿir: he heard Ahmad say, “Had I chosen to narrate from anyone who capitulated, I would have narrated from Abū Maʿmar and Abū Kurayb.”

I say: This was because Abū Maʿmar al-Hudhalī regretted his action and despised himself, while the authorities allotted Abū Kurayb two dinars after his capitulation, and—despite his poverty—he returned them.

Al-Ṣūlī reported: Ḥusayn ibn Qahm narrated to us, my father narrated to us, that Ibn Abī Dāwūd said to al-Muʿtaṣim, “Commander of the Faithful, this man—meaning Ahmad—claims that Allah will be seen in the Hereafter, while the eye can only fall upon something bounded.” So he asked, “What do you have to say about this?” He replied