—among his early journeys, and Dr. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid remarks that he does not know when al-Dhahabī traveled to Egypt. He adds, “It is likely that his trip to Egypt came soon after his father’s death in 697 AH, and that he returned in 699 AH.” (1)

He bases this view on what Ibn Ḥajar cites from the Mashyakha of Badr al-Dīn al-Nāblusī, who said: “The first position he held as head of a Qur’an-reading circle in the Umayyad Mosque—in the front of the Zakariyyā Riwāq, replacing Shams al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī, the blind reciter—was in Muḥarram 699 AH, shortly after he had returned from his trip to Egypt.” (2)

By tracing al-Dhahabī’s activities, however, we have been able to pin down his Egyptian journey more precisely: it took place between Rajab and Dhū al-Qaʿda of 695 AH. Evidence shows that he set out in Rajab 695 AH, heading first to Palestine. In the biography of his teacher Umm Muḥammad Sayyida bint Mūsā ibn ʿUthmān al-Mārāniyya al-Miṣriyya (d. 695 AH) he writes: “I journeyed to meet her, but she died while I was in Palestine, in Rajab 695.” (3) In her notice in Tārīkh al-Islām he further states: “I had been longing to see her and traveled to Egypt believing she was still alive, but when I arrived I found that she had died ten days earlier… She passed away on Friday, the sixth of Rajab, while I was in Wādī Faḥma.” (4) From this we deduce that he reached the Egyptian lands on the sixteenth of Rajab 695 AH.

The first audition he opened in Egypt was with his shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥalabī, known as Ibn al-Ẓāhirī (626–696 AH), (5)