was his father’s only child—or at least the most prominent among his sons (1), and this explains the depth of his father’s concern for him.
It seems that his father finally gave him permission to travel when he turned twenty, in 693 AH (2).
Even then, the permission was limited to brief journeys, none of which ordinarily lasted more than four months (3); moreover, he had to be accompanied by individuals his father trusted (4).
A. His journeys within the Syrian lands: The sources mention al-Dhahabī’s travels only in passing and supply us with little detail.
Nevertheless, we have been able to determine that his first excursion was probably to Baalbek in 693 AH (5). There he completed a full recitation of the Qur’an under al-Muwaffaq al-Naṣībī, who died in 695 AH (6), and studied extensively with the ḥadith scholar, man of letters, and imam Tāj al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad al-Maghribī—later known as al-Baʿlabakkī—who died in 696 AH (7).
We encounter him in Baalbek once again in 707 AH (8), and during these two visits he heard ḥadiths from many shaykhs.
(1) We have found no mention of a brother of Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Dhahabi in any of the printed or manuscript sources we examined, even though al-Dhahabi is normally meticulous in recording his relatives.
(2) Al-Dhahabi, Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 1, fol. 65.
(3) Al-Dhahabi, in his entry on Sharaf al-Din Abu l-Husayn Yahya b. Ahmad al-Judhami al-Iskandarani, who had reached the age of eighty-seven, notes that he encountered delays and difficulties in reading the Qurʾanic readings to him and feared that his time would be wasted: “I had promised—and sworn to—my father that I would not stay on this journey for more than four months, so I was afraid of disobeying him” (Maʿrifat al-qurraʾ, p. 558).
(4) His father accompanied him on his trip to Aleppo in 693 H/1294 CE and also heard hadith there with him. On his journey to Egypt in 695 H/1296 CE, his companion was his milk-brother, the Shafiʿi jurist Dawud b. Ibrahim b. Dawud b. al-ʿAttar, who was eight years older than al-Dhahabi (Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 1, fol. 47).
(5) Al-Dhahabi, Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 1, fol. 65.
(6) Ibn al-Jazari, Ghayat al-nihaya, 2:71; al-Dhahabi, Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 2, fol. 74.
(7) Al-Dhahabi, Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 1, fol. 71; al-Subki, Tabaqat, 9:102.
(8) Al-Dhahabi, Muʿjam al-shuyukh, vol. 1, fol. 52.