from al-Miqdād al-Qaysī, and toward the end of his life he performed the pilgrimage; he was a devout man who would rise for night worship (1).

His craft provided him with comfort and wealth, and from his own money he manumitted five slaves (2). He married the daughter of a man of Mosuli origin, ʿIlm al-Dīn Abū Bakr Sanjar ibn ʿAbd Allāh, who was renowned for his affluence and described as “a virtuous, intelligent man, supervisor of the proclamations in the Army Bureau… and he left fifteen thousand” (3) gold dinars. Thanks to his learning, wealth, and magnanimity he attained a standing that moved large numbers of the people of Damascus to escort his funeral at the end of Jumādā I, 697 AH, with the Chief Judge of the time, ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn Jamāʿah al-Kinānī, leading the procession (4).

Muḥammad came to be known as Ibn al-Dhahabī, after his father’s profession, and he himself recorded his name as “Ibn al-Dhahabī” (5).

It appears that in the early part of his life he adopted his father’s trade, and for that reason some of his contemporaries referred to him simply as “al-Dhahabī,” among them Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (6), Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (7), al-Ḥusaynī (8), ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr (9), and others.