and the chapter went on to examine al-Dhahabī’s personal ties with Ibn Taymiyya, al-Mizzī, and al-Barzālī and the role those relationships played in crystallizing his Salafi outlook. This was reflected in his inclination toward Ḥanbalī positions and his defense of their creed, in his strong attachment to hadith and the scholars of hadith, and in his view of the sciences, their practitioners, and their attitude toward the rational disciplines. All of this left a clear imprint on his historical method: it surfaced in his intense interest in biographical entries, which became the foundation of his books and the pivot of his historical thinking; in his perspective on historical events and the principles by which he selected them; and later in the criticism directed at his writings, which provoked debate among the scholars of his day and those who came after.

As for his scholarly activity, I showed that it followed two main avenues: first, his copious writings, and second, his teaching of hadith in the leading dār al-ḥadīth institutes of Damascus, where we have identified five such institutions whose chairmanship he held simultaneously shortly before his death.

I then clarified al-Dhahabī’s scholarly stature on the basis of an extensive study of the many works he left behind.

The study revealed that his rank and brilliance shone most brightly when I examined him as a traditionist, historian, and critic.

Although he lived in an environment largely characterized by stagnation, rote transmission, and epitomizing, he freed himself from much of that through the breadth of his studies and his sharp insight.

For al-Dhahabī, the concept of history was intimately connected to the noble Prophetic hadith and its sciences; this is evident in his meticulous attention to biographical dictionaries, the very works on which his wide-ranging fame as a historian rests.

His vast expertise in narrator criticism made him a skilled evaluator. This appears in the works he devoted to critical study, in his brilliant observations on the principles of critique, in his rejection of many reports, in his censure of leading critics, and in his remarkable capacity for investigation and reasoning.