—ultimately traced back to the tribe of Banū Tamīm (1). The family had settled in the city of Mayyāfāriqīn, one of the most renowned towns in the Diyār Bakr region (2).

It appears that his great-grandfather, Qaymāz, spent his entire life there (3) and died in 661 AH, having surpassed the age of one hundred. Al-Dhahabī writes: “Qaymāz son of Shaykh ʿAbd Allāh al-Turkumānī al-Fāriqī is my father’s grandfather. My father’s cousin, ʿAlī ibn Fāris al-Najjār, told me, ‘Our grandfather died at one hundred and nine years of age.’ I say: he lived long, became blind toward the end, and passed away in 661 AH” (4). He had also performed the pilgrimage (5).

His grandfather Fakhr al-Dīn Abū Aḥmad ʿUthmān was illiterate and possessed no formal learning. He adopted carpentry as his trade, yet he was “strong in his trust in Allah” (6).

It seems that he was the one who came to Damascus, made it his home, and there he died in 683 AH when he was in his early seventies (7).

As for his father, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad, he was born around 641 AH. He abandoned his father’s craft in favor of working in beaten gold, at which he excelled, earned distinction, and became known as “al-Dhahabī.” He also pursued knowledge, studying Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in 666 AH under al-Miqdād al-Qaysī,