through him Muslims discern the faithful from the heretic.

As for his writings: they are many. The most famous is the Musnad, which contains nearly forty thousand hadiths; the Kitāb al-Zuhd (Book of Asceticism); the Virtues of the Companions; al-ʿIlal wa Maʿrifat al-Rijāl (Hidden Defects and Knowledge of the Narrators); al-Waraʿ (Scrupulous Piety); al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah¹ (Refutation of the Jahmiyyah); al-Sunnah; al-Ṣalāh (Prayer); and the collections of legal questions narrated by his son ʿAbd Allāh, his son Ṣāliḥ, Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Hāniʾ, Isḥāq ibn Manṣūr al-Kawsaj, Abū al-Qāsim, and many others—approaching fifty works, if not more.

As for his teachers: those from whom he transmitted in the Musnad numbered two hundred and eighty-odd, as al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī records in the Siyar². Among his teachers were al-Shāfiʿī and ʿAbd al-Razzāq, and these very teachers later narrated from him.

As for his students: they are countless, yet the most prominent and renowned among them are al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, and al-Nasāʾī³.

As for his ordeal over the claim that the Qur’an was created: he was subjected to kinds of torture, threats, and abuse the like of which no one else had endured. Al-Maʾmūn had summoned people to profess the createdness of the Qur’an, but he died before debating Imām Aḥmad. When al-Muʿtaṣim assumed power he imprisoned Imām Aḥmad for nearly thirty months and ordered that his back be flogged