Book: Siyar A'lam An-Nubala by Ad-Dhahabi - سير أعلام النبلاء ـ الإمام الذهبي

A Prized Contribution to the Scholars and Students of Knowledge

This work was crafted in a manner that satisfies the illustrious scholars and eager students of knowledge, in addition to captivating thinkers of various disciplines and scholarly affiliations. All this was achieved by the grace of the Most Generous, the Benevolent, [God], and through the support of the "Dar Al-Hadith" proprietors who facilitated its publication to the masses.

An Exceptional Book of Biographies

This magnificent tome, which we present to the discerning readers, is regarded as one of the most distinguished books of biographies that spans across all eras until the time of its author. It includes biographies of numerous luminaries from both the eastern and western regions of the world.

The work encompasses the lives of caliphs, kings, princes, ministers, physicians, hadith scholars, jurists, grammarians, poets, ascetics, philosophers, and theologians. However, it gives special focus to the hadith scholars, honoring them above others for their esteemed role as carriers of the prophetic knowledge and its guardians. These scholars discern between authentic and weak hadiths, and those accepted or rejected. Moreover, many of them were hadith narrators themselves; the study of their conditions, documenting their birth and death dates, their mentors and students, and scholarly opinions about them helps in assessing the authenticity of chains of narration and their acceptance or weakness, among other things.

The Structure and Content of the Book

The book contains "5964" biographies. Some of these are repeated. The work covers figures from the dawn of Islam until the year "739 AH." The author divided his work into thirty-five levels or categories, but he did not follow a uniform structure. The last, thirty-fifth category covers eighty-six years, while the average duration for the other categories is between fifteen and sixteen years. Some categories cover as little as nine years, like the sixteenth category. Al-Dhahabi included some kings, princes, and their siblings and descendants in the same section even if they weren't from the same category, allowing readers to follow related events that are usually connected.

Al-Dhahabi employed a distinct method in crafting each biography. He began with the individual's name, title, epithet, and lineage, followed by their birth date. He then listed their teachers and students, documented their writings and scholarly contributions, and noted their scholarly standing through the words of other scholars. He recorded their death dates and sometimes provided multiple sources for the death date, determining the most accurate when necessary. He also noted other notable figures who died in the same year as the subject of the biography.

In many biographies, Al-Dhahabi [may God have mercy on him] includes some of the hadiths transmitted through the subject of the biography, as well as accounts of conquests and other deeds by kings, caliphs, princes, and governors. Additionally, he presents samples of poets' verses and select prose from writers. He elaborated extensively on these aspects...