among the imams; all of them forbade uncritical adherence to themselves, just as al-Shāfi‘ī forbade uncritical adherence to himself and other scholars. How, then, could Ahmad or anyone else be followed uncritically in the fundamentals of religion?

Ahmad’s associates—such as Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Ibrāhīm al-Harbī, ‘Uthmān ibn Sa‘īd al-Dārimī, Abū Zur‘ah, Abū Hātim, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Baqī ibn Makhlad, Abū Bakr al-Athram, his two sons Sālih and ‘Abd Allāh, ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Dārimī, Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Wārah, and others among the foremost scholars of religious knowledge and jurisprudence—would accept the statements of Ahmad or anyone else only with supporting evidence that he explained to them. They had received knowledge through direct transmission just as he had, and they shared many of his teachers. Those teachers whom they had not met, they learned from through their students, who were Ahmad’s peers. These matters are known to anyone familiar with the history of Islam and its scholars.