and it sufficed them.
Abū Umayyah al-Ṭarsūsī said, “I asked Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal about a group who gather while a reciter chants in a plaintive tone, at which they weep, and who sometimes even extinguish the lamp. Aḥmad replied, ‘If he recites in the manner of Abū Mūsā, there is no objection.’
Al-Khallāl relates from al-Awzāʿī that he was asked about people who assemble and appoint one of them to deliver an admonitory narrative. He answered, ‘So long as this occurs only once in a while, there is no harm in it.’
Thus, Aḥmad allowed gatherings for supplication on the condition that they not become a regular practice, and he laid down the same condition for visiting places that still bear the traces of the Prophets. Sindi al-Khawātimī said, “We asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh…”
(1) The report is found in ʿAbd al-Razzaq’s Musannaf, Book of Jumuʿah, chapter “The first to hold the congregational prayer,” no. 5144 (3:159); I did not locate it in Ahmad’s Musnad. Al-Qurtubi cites it in his Tafsir (18:98), and Ibn Hajar quotes it in abridged form in Fath al-Bari (2:353), noting that the chain is sound up to Ibn Sirin.
(2) The narrator is Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muslim al-Khuzaʿi al-Tarsusi, Abu Umayya, originally from Baghdad and better known by his kunya. Al-Taqrib describes him as “trustworthy, a hadith scholar who sometimes errs.” He transmitted several legal questions from Imam Ahmad, died in 273 AH, and al-Nasaʾi narrated from him. See Taqrib al-Tahdhib (2:141, T14 A) and Tabaqat al-Hanabila (1:265–66, no. 376). The printed edition explicitly names him—“qala, wa-qala Abu Umayya Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Muslim al-Tarsusi”—unlike the other manuscripts.
(3) Printed edition: aṭfiʾu (“extinguish it”).
(4) The words “al-qawm yajtamiʿun” (“the people gather”) are missing from manuscript A.
(5) Manuscript D reads min. The expression baʿd al-ayyam (“after some days”) means the event did not occur repeatedly on a fixed date; Allah knows best.
(6) The word “Ahmad” is absent from copy Ṭ.
(7) The person meant is Sindi Abu Bakr al-Khawatimī al-Baghdadi, who heard a good number of questions from Imam Ahmad. See Tabaqat al-Hanabila (1:170–71, no. 229).