With Allah’s assistance, volume sixteen of Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ has come to an end. The seventeenth volume follows, opening with the biography of the ruler of Mosul, Ḥusām al-Dawlah Muqallid ibn al-Musayyab al-ʿUqaylī.

At the close of the tenth volume of the author’s original manuscript we read the following colophon:

“The tenth volume of Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ by the shaykh, the imām, the learned and practicing scholar, the authoritative and accomplished critic, the master who gathers the branches of knowledge, the historian of Islam, Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Dhahabī—may Allah prolong his days—has been completed.

This is the first copy transcribed from the author’s own handwriting and, so far as possible, it has been collated against it. Praise and grace belong to Allah alone; with Him is success and protection. The next part—volume eleven—begins with the account of the ruler of Mosul, Ḥusām al-Dawlah Muqallid ibn al-Musayyab al-ʿUqaylī.

The work was finished on the night of Sunday, the tenth of Rajab, in the year 741 AH.”