—the people were unaware of it. The following morning, once they learned what had happened, they began coming in waves to pray at the grave, and for as long as Allah willed they kept arriving and offering the funeral prayer there.

ʿUbayd Allah ibn Yaḥyā ibn Khāqān said: I heard al-Mutawakkil say to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah, “Glad tidings to you, Muḥammad—you were the one who prayed over Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, may Allah have mercy on him.”

al-Khallāl said: I heard ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Warrāq say, “We have never heard of any gathering, in the Age of Ignorance or in Islam, that matched it—meaning the number who attended the funeral—until news reached us that the entire area had been surveyed and carefully measured, and the figure came to roughly one million.

“We ourselves estimated about sixty thousand women at the graveside, and the residents opened the doors of their houses along the streets and alleyways, calling out to anyone who needed water for wuḍūʾ (ritual ablution).”

ʿAbd Allah ibn Isḥāq al-Khurāsānī narrated: Bunān ibn Aḥmad al-Qaṣabānī (1) informed us that he attended Aḥmad’s funeral and that the rows of worshippers stretched from the Maydān all the way to the bridge at Bāb al-Qaṭīʿah.

Those present were reckoned at eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women, and when they counted those who performed the ʿAṣr prayer that day in the Ruṣāfah Mosque they numbered a little over twenty thousand.

Mūsā ibn Hārūn, the ḥāfiẓ, said: It is reported that when Aḥmad died, the open spaces where the people had stood to pray were measured; calculating by area, the number of worshippers was estimated at six hundred thousand or more, not counting those on the outskirts, in the surrounding quarters, on rooftops, and in scattered locations—who exceeded one million.