A single glance at the biographies gathered in, for example, volume thirteen shows a kind of sequential arrangement by the subjects’ dates of death, though not with the precision found in works that are organized strictly year by year.

In Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ we often find al-Dhahabi grouping the biographies of relatives together—especially brothers, fathers, and sons. By doing so he preserves a sense of historical unity, yet it comes at the expense of keeping each person within his proper “stratum” and chronological place.

Thus, when al-Dhahabi introduced the entry of ʿĀqil b. al-Bukayr, one of the martyrs of Badr, he immediately attached the biographies of his three brothers: Khālid b. al-Bukayr, who was martyred at al-Rajīʿ in 4 AH; Iyās b. al-Bukayr, d. 34 AH; and ʿĀmir, who fell at al-Yamāmah.

Again, after writing the entry for Abū Jandal b. Suhayl, he proceeded to his brother ʿAbd Allāh b. Suhayl and then to their father Suhayl b. ʿAmr. When treating Abū al-Ḥārith Nawfal b. al-Ḥārith, a cousin of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, he added the biographies of his son al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal, his grandson ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal, and his great-grandson ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥārith b. Nawfal; he then followed them with the subject’s two brothers, Saʿīd b. al-Ḥārith and Abū Sufyān b. al-Ḥārith, and finally with Abū Sufyān’s son Jaʿfar b. Abī Sufyān b. al-Ḥārith.

This tendency to assemble relatives and thus override stratum boundaries is a method al-Dhahabi follows throughout the book, though not invariably. We see it even in the closing sections: within the thirtieth stratum he records the entry of Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Hamadhānī, d. 569 AH, and immediately appends that of his son Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, d. 605 AH, who really belongs to the next stratum.

Likewise, when he writes about Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-Shahrazūrī, d. 572 AH, he includes his father, known by the honorific al-Murtadā, d. 511 AH, a figure of an earlier stratum.

And in that same thirtieth stratum he records the biography of Qawām al-Dīn Abū al-Mahāmid Ḥammād.