said: “I saw in a dream that I had entered the Garden. Before me stood a palace of silver; its gate swung open and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal came out wearing a cloak of light. He said to me, ‘So you have come?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ He kept repeating the question until I finally reached him.

“In another dream I saw mountains of musk with people gathered around them, saying, ‘The warrior has arrived.’ Then Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal entered, sword slung across his shoulder and a spear in his hand, and he announced, ‘This is Paradise.’ ”

Ibn al-Jawzī collected these visions exhaustively in about thirty folios, and Ibn al-Bannāʾ devoted a separate booklet to the same subject. Abū ʿAbd Allah (Aḥmad) is not someone whose spiritual rank needs to be established by dreams, yet such visions are a force sent by Allah to gladden the believers—especially when they occur repeatedly.

Al-Khallāl said: Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd told me, “I was at sea, returning by night from the region of Sind, when a voice called out, ‘The righteous servant has died!’ I asked someone with us, ‘Who was that?’ He replied, ‘One of the righteous jinn.’ Aḥmad died on that very night.”

Al-Khallāl also said: I heard Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī relate from ʿAlī ibn al-Jahm: “When I came back from ʿUmān we cast anchor by an island, and some people had arrived from Iraq only to draw fresh water. Suddenly I heard shouting, cries of ‘Allāhu akbar,’ and loud lamentation. I asked, ‘What is this?’ They answered, ‘The best of the Baghdadis has died’—meaning their scholar Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal.”

Al-Khallāl further reported: Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās narrated to us; I heard ʿUbayd ibn Sharīk say: “An effeminate man died and was seen in a dream. He said, ‘I have been forgiven, for Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was buried in our cemetery, and because of him the people of these graves have all been forgiven.’ ”