would not taste any of that food; instead, Aḥmad was observing an unbroken fast, passing all those days without eating, for he could find nothing whose consumption pleased him. His two sons, Ṣāliḥ (1) and ʿAbd Allāh, however, accepted those gratuities without his knowledge. Ṣāliḥ (2) remarked, “Had we not hurried back to Baghdad, I feared the Shaykh would have died of hunger.” (3)

During al-Mutawakkil’s reign the Sunnah enjoyed extraordinary ascendancy. The caliph would appoint no one without first consulting Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and the installation of Yaḥyā ibn Aktham as Chief Judge (4) took place on the Imām’s advice. Yaḥyā himself was counted among the foremost champions of the Sunnah, a scholar revered for his veneration of the Book, the Sunnah, jurisprudence, ḥadith, and adherence to the transmitted reports. Acting on his own authority he appointed Ḥayyān ibn Bishr as judge of the Eastern District and Sawwār ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAnbarī as judge of the Western Side (5); both men were one-eyed. On this, one of Ibn Abī Duʿād’s partisans (6) penned the following lampoon:

I have witnessed among the great enormities two judges—
a marvel famed in the lands both east and west.
Blindness they divided exactly by halves,
as they parceled out the benches of the two quarters.
When either nods his head to examine a case
of inheritance or of debt, you would think
A cask had been set upon him and its bung pulled out (7)
to serve as a single eye.
They bode ill for the age when Yaḥyā perished,
for he opened the judiciary with two one-eyed men.

That year the summer expedition was led by ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā al-Armanī.

The pilgrimage was conducted by ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, the governor of the Ḥijāz.

And in the same year Ḥātim al-Aṣamm (8) passed away.