Sixth — His Scholarly Activity and Teaching Posts

Al-Dhahabi’s intellectual productivity seems to have begun in earnest at the very opening of the eighth century AH. He started by abridging a large number of the classical masterworks in the various disciplines he practiced, foremost among them history and hadith.

Subsequently he embarked on the composition of his monumental work, Tarikh al-Islam (The History of Islam), whose first edition he brought to completion in 714 AH (1).

In 703 AH al-Dhahabi was appointed preacher (khatib) of the mosque in Kafr Batna (2), a village in the Ghuta district of Damascus (3), and he remained resident there until 718 AH.

It was in that tranquil village that al-Dhahabi authored the finest of his books, aided—so it appears—by the fact that he was completely free to devote himself to writing.

In Shawwal of 718 AH Shaykh Kamal al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Shurayshi al-Waʾili, the administrator of the public treasury and shaykh of Dar al-Hadith at the Turbah of Umm al-Salih and elsewhere (4), passed away. At that time this Dar al-Hadith was one of the largest hadith colleges in Damascus (5). Kamal al-Din ibn al-Shurayshi had overseen it for thirty-three years, from 685 AH until his death, and before him it had been directed by his father (6).

Ibn Kathir, in his chronicle of the events of 718 AH, writes: “On Monday, the twentieth of…"