The volume that opens with the biography of the eminent ḥadith master Abū Ṭāhir al-Salafī (d. 576 AH) and closes with the biography of Sultan al-Malik al-Manṣūr Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī, son of Sultan al-Malik al-Muʿizz Aybak al-Turkumānī al-Ṣāliḥī—who was deposed from the sultanate in 657 AH and did not die until around 700 AH—was long presumed to be the final volume of the book. I am convinced, indeed almost certain, that there is yet another volume that completes the work: volume fourteen. This is the very volume which the distinguished Dr. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid regarded as an appendix to Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, and many have simply followed his view. The evidence for my position is as follows:

1 – It is well known that al-Dhahabī compiled Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ after authoring Tārīkh al-Islām and that in the Siyar he followed the same chronological framework. Tārīkh al-Islām covers the period from the beginning of the Prophetic Hijra up to the end of 700 AH. Yet our study of the biographies of the thirty-fifth generation, which concludes volume thirteen, shows that their subjects died between 651 and 660 AH. Where, then, are the biographies of those who passed away between 661 and 700 AH? This span of nearly forty years includes many events al-Dhahabī personally witnessed and many figures he knew: numerous direct teachers of his own and the teachers of his teachers, among them the leading scholars of the age—Abū Shāmah, Ibn al-Saʿī, al-Nawawī, Fakhr al-Dīn Ibn al-Bukhārī, Ibn al-Ẓāhirī, and hundreds of others. It is inconceivable that al-Dhahabī would omit them when he recorded the lives of people far less significant. Hence this entire period, almost four decades, must without doubt constitute volume fourteen of the Siyar.

2 – How, then, did respected scholars come to suppose that this was the final volume of the Siyar and to assert that its biographies reach the year 700 AH?