toward them—he was lying down at the time—and when they had gone out he said, “I do not wish such people to come in to see me.”

Al-Khallāl narrated to us: Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Simsār related to me from Isḥāq ibn Hāniʾ, who said: Abū ʿAbd Allāh said to me, “Come early so that we may counterbalance it with a little zuhd (asceticism) (1).”

So I went to him at daybreak and said to his bond-woman who had borne him a child, “Give me a mat and a cushion.” I spread them out in the vestibule. Abū ʿAbd Allāh came out carrying his books and inkwell and asked, “What is this?”

I replied, “So that we can sit on it.”

He said, “Take it away. Zuhd is only becoming when accompanied by zuhd.” I removed it, and he sat on the bare ground.

He also told me: Yūsuf ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk narrated that Ibn Jabalah said:

“I was standing at the door of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal while the door was shut. His slave-wife was speaking to him, saying, ‘I share this hardship with you, whereas the household of Ṣāliḥ eat and enjoy themselves,’ and he kept saying to her, ‘Speak good words.’

A small boy came out with him and began to cry. He asked, ‘What do you want?’

The child answered, ‘Raisins.’

He said, ‘Go and take some from the grocer for a single ḥabbah (2).’”

Al-Maimūnī said: “The house of Abū ʿAbd Allāh was cramped and small, and in hot weather he would sleep on the lower floor.

His uncle told me, ‘More than once I advised him otherwise, but he would not comply; he would sleep upstairs.’

I saw the spot where he used to lie. It contained a shādhakūnah (3) and a bardhaʾah (4), both of them thick with dirt.”