Second – The Beginning of His Pursuit of Knowledge

Al-Dhahabi began to devote himself earnestly to the pursuit of knowledge when he was eighteen years old. His attention focused on two principal fields: the Qur’an’s variant readings and the noble hadith.

A. The Variant Readings: Al-Dhahabi was keen on the recitation of the Noble Qur’an and on studying the science of qirāʾāt (variant readings). In 691 AH he and a group of companions went to the master-reciter Jamal al-Din Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Dāwūd al-ʿAsqalānī—later of Damascus—known as al-Fāḍilī, and with him he began the major composite reading (al-jamʿ al-kabīr) (1). Al-Fāḍilī had been a close disciple of Shaykh ʿIlm al-Din al-Sakhāwī (d. 643 AH), who was the leading authority on Qur’anic recitation in his time (2). Under him al-Fāḍilī had mastered the seven canonical readings and then took up teaching at the Mausoleum of Umm al-Ṣāliḥ. A partial stroke later struck him, so he taught from his home. Al-Dhahabi managed to read with him up to the closing passages of Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ, but the shaykh’s paralysis worsened and he forbade students from entering. He died in 692 AH, leaving Al-Dhahabi’s reading with him unfinished (3).

While engaged in the jamʿ al-kabīr with al-Fāḍilī, Al-Dhahabi had at the same time commenced the same program with Shaykh Jamal al-Din Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Ghālī, the Damascene reciter (d. 708 AH) (4), with whom he completed an entire khatmah that embraced the various schools of recitation.