b. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣaffārī, d. 576 AH; he then set down the notice of the son’s father, Rukn al-Dīn, who lived on until 532 AH, and of his grandfather Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq, who survived to about 500 AH.
He next wrote the entry of Abū al-Mawāhib Ibn Ṣaṣrā, d. 586 AH, and appended to it the biographies of his father, Abū al-Barakāt Ibn Ṣaṣrā, d. 573 AH, and his grandfather Maḥfūẓ, d. 545 AH.
Likewise, when he treated the gallant sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf, d. 589 AH, he recorded alongside him the lives of his sons: al-ʿAzīz, d. 595 AH; al-Ẓāhir, d. 613 AH; al-Afḍal, d. 622 AH—and so on.

Fifth – The nature of the entries in Siyar and the principles governing their selection
Our study of al-Dhahabī’s life has shown him to be a scholar of vast reading and abundant learning, especially in the field of biography. It is the domain in which he authored a cluster of works and displayed such mastery that the scholars unanimously dubbed him “the historian of Islam.” He composed his monumental Tārīkh al-Islām, which contains some forty thousand individual entries. From that immense store of material he had to choose what he deemed suitable for Siyar. Did he follow a particular plan in making that selection? Our analysis of the book indicates that he proceeded according to a well-defined method, both in deciding which individuals to include and in choosing what information to cite for each of them. In every case he relied on the scale by which he measured the subject on the one hand, and on the reports that had reached him about the person on the other. All of this sprang from his own conception of what would benefit a work such as Siyar.
We may, in what follows, discern the main criteria he employed in selecting biographies:

1. Scholarly value: In Tārīkh al-Islām al-Dhahabī listed all the renowned figures and public luminaries, and he did not