He did not grow up in Damascus as a stranger, only to leave it as one; rather, he spent his whole life within her precincts, recording her history—enriching her festivals and victories with his words, and weeping over her sorrows and bereavements. Through the ebb and flow of political struggles he paints for us her citadel and gates, her roads and squares, and interprets what he reads in the eyes of her people as they bid farewell to a deposed governor, welcome a new ruler, or behold a rebellious or treacherous deputy.

Once he had emerged from the miḥrāb of learning, Ibn Kathīr was invited to gatherings of scholarship and arbitration, held either in Damascus’s enchanting orchards or in the wide halls of her Levantine palaces.

The Damascenes were eager to benefit from his prodigious memory and quick recall. He therefore mounted the pulpits of their mosques as a preacher, entered their specialized madrasas as teacher and director, and sat in the Umayyad Mosque beneath the Dome of the Eagle as Qur’an exegete and ḥadīth scholar. What blessed and generous venues awaited him in Damascus! They opened his soul to knowledge with ever-growing zeal and placed in his hand the pen of a scrupulous jurist and conscientious historian; thus he lived for al-Fayḥāʾ (Damascus) even more than he merely lived in it.

In Ibn Kathīr’s day Damascus was a mine of knowledge and a refuge for scholars. She opened her arms to the great teachers fleeing the Franks and the Mongols, became for them a nest and a safe haven, and her madrasas welcomed them warmly—so they filled them with learning and books. Among her foremost luminaries were the trustworthy ḥadīth master Abū’l-Ḥajjāj al-Mizzī, the authoritative Shāfiʿī jurist Taj al-Dīn al-Fazārī, the renewer Ibn Taymiyyah, and his celebrated students who followed him, such as Ibn al-Qayyim and Ibn Kathīr.

Here we wish to record the first steps of Ibn Kathīr’s scholarly training during his youth:

– He completed the memorization of the Qur’an in 711 AH under Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Abī’l-Ḥasan al-Baʿlabakkī (1), the Ḥanbalī, who died in 730 AH.
– He studied the canonical readings (qirāʾāt) with Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar (1) al-Labbād, who died in 724 AH.
– He learned calligraphy under Shaykh Najm al-Dīn Mūsā ibn ʿAlī (1), who died in 723 AH.