A trustworthy narrator told us—through Abū al-Makārim al-Taymī, al-Ḥaddād, Abū Nuʿaym, my own father, and Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar—that ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad was asked, “Did your father remain lucid when the final throes set in?” He replied, “Yes.

We were performing ablution for him when he began signalling with his hand. Ṣāliḥ said to me, ‘What is he saying?’ I answered, ‘He is asking us to interlace his fingers.’ We did so, after which he stopped gesturing and died at that very moment.

Ṣāliḥ added, “My father kept moving his tongue in remembrance until he passed away.”

Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd al-Aḥmasī related: “We carried Aḥmad’s bier after the ʿAṣr prayer and buried him at sunset.”

Ṣāliḥ said: “No stranger was present while my father was being washed. When we began to shroud him, the Banū Hāshim overruled us. They wept over him, brought their children who flung themselves upon him and kissed him. We laid him on the bier and bound the shroud with turbans.”

Al-Khallāl reported: I heard Ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ al-Qanṭarī say, “I have attended the pilgrimage season for forty years, yet never have I seen a gathering like this—meaning the funeral of Abū ʿAbd Allāh.”

Al-Khallāl also said: I heard ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Warrāq remark, “At Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal’s funeral the people openly upheld the sunnah and censured the people of innovation. Allah gladdened the Muslims thereby, despite their bereavement, when they witnessed the honor, the ascendancy of Islam, and the humiliation of the deviant.”

Some people remained at the grave and even spent the night there, and women kept coming until they were prevented.

I heard al-Marwazī relate—from ʿAlī ibn Mahruwayh, from his aunt—who said, “On the day Aḥmad died, not a single ʿAṣr prayer was performed in any mosque of Baghdad.”

It was also said that the crowding around the grave lasted for several days.