Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṭāhir was standing amid the people; he moved forward a few steps and offered condolences to Imām Aḥmad’s children. He was the one who led the congregation in the funeral prayer over him, yet a number of people repeated the prayer at the graveside after the burial for that very reason. The body was not finally laid to rest—may Allah have mercy on him—until after the ʿAṣr Prayer because of the sheer multitude present.

Al-Bayhaqī and others relate that the emir Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṭāhir ordered the crowd to be counted, and they were found to number one million three hundred thousand. In another report the figure is one million seven hundred [thousand] people, not counting those who were in the boats (1). The lowest estimate mentioned is seven hundred thousand.

Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: I heard Abū Zurʿah say, “News reached me that al-Mutawakkil ordered the ground on which the people had stood when the funeral prayer for Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal was performed to be measured, and it came to two million five hundred thousand” (2).

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī narrates from al-Ḥākim: I heard Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Kāmil al-Qāḍī say: I heard Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Zanjānī say: I heard ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Warrāq say, “We have never heard of any gathering, whether in the pre-Islamic era or in Islam, that was larger than the gathering at the funeral of Abū ʿAbd Allah.”

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim said: Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Makkī told me; I heard al-Warkānī, a neighbour of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, say: “On the day Aḥmad died, twenty thousand Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians embraced Islam. [Mourning was observed among Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians]” (3). In some manuscripts it reads, “Ten thousand embraced Islam instead of twenty thousand,” and Allah knows best (4).

Al-Dāraquṭnī said: I heard Abū Sahl ibn Ziyād say: I heard ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad say: I heard my father say, “Tell the people of innovation: the proof between us and you will be the Day of Funerals.” Allah verified his words, for he—may Allah have mercy on him—was the Imām of the Sunnah in his time, while the figurehead of his opponents, Aḥmad ibn Abī Duʾād the chief judge (5), received no public attention at his death and only a handful of people followed his bier. The same was true of al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī, despite his asceticism, piety, meticulousness, and self-accountability.