Third: His Birth and Early Years

His Birth:
Ibn Kathīr was born in the village of Majdal (1), a settlement to the east of the city of Busrā, in the year 701 AH. Nothing definitive has reached us concerning the exact day or month of his birth, and even the year was not firmly established by some biographers. Imām al-Dhahabī, for instance, writes in Tabaqāt al-Ḥuffāẓ: “He was born after the year seven-hundred, or therein” (2). Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar states in al-Durar al-Kāminah: “He was born in seven-hundred or shortly after it” (3).

The widely accepted date is deduced from Ibn Kathīr’s own words. While recording the life of his father, who died in 703 AH, he says: “At that time I was a small child, about three years old or so; I remember him only as one recalls a dream” (4). Anyone who examines his phrase—“about three years old or so”—will be inclined to conclude that he was born in 701 AH rather than 700 AH, unless he was born at the very end of 700 and his father died at the beginning of 703.

Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir, in ʿUmdat al-Tafsīr, maintains that Ibn Kathīr was born in 700 AH—or slightly earlier. He supports this with Ibn Kathīr’s own statement, “I remember him only as one recalls a dream,” remarking: “I doubt that a child younger than three retains dream-like memories, whether clearer or vaguer; so, in my considered opinion, he must have been over three when his father passed away” (5). He adds: “A three-year-old cannot know calendar years with certainty; he must therefore have heard the year of his father’s death from those around him—brothers, relatives, or neighbors” (6).

Even so, we return to affirm the year 701 AH, for it is the date given by Ibn Kathīr himself. Under the events of the year ‘one and seventy and seven-hundred,’ he states unequivocally: “In this year its chronicler, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr al-Qurashī, was born” (7).