– In al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah (16/406) he says: “In the year 761 AH a decree was issued obliging the Qalandariyya to refrain from shaving their beards, eyebrows, and moustaches. According to Ibn Ḥazm this is unanimously forbidden, though some jurists have described it only as disliked. What would have been more fitting was to command them to abandon that base hashish and to enforce the ḥadd upon them for consuming it and becoming intoxicated, as some jurists have ruled.”

– He also records in al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah (16/354) under the events of 751 AH: “Among the astonishing and singular happenings—one the like of which had not occurred for more than two hundred years—was the abolition of the festival lighting in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus on the night of mid-Shaʿbān. Not one extra lamp was added beyond the number customarily lit on any other night of the year. Praise and bounty belong to Allah. The scholars and the devout rejoiced and thanked Allah Most High for ending this flagrant innovation, from which many evils and the renting of space in the Umayyad Mosque had arisen. The decree came from the Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ḥasan ibn al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn—may Allah perpetuate his sovereignty and strengthen its pillars. The one who pursued the matter in Egypt was the amir Ḥusām al-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn al-Najībī—may Allah brighten his face—who was then residing there. I myself saw in his possession a fatwa bearing the hand of Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah, Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Zamalkānī and others annulling this innovation; Allah then brought it to fruition, and to Him are praise and gratitude.”

– And he writes in al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah (16/313) about the events of 743 AH: “On Friday, 16 Ṣafar, just before ʿAṣr, a courier arrived from Egypt summoning the Chief Judge Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī (1) to take office there. People went to greet him and bid him farewell after many rumors had spread about him, and it had become common talk that a tribunal would be convened to charge him over monies taken from the orphans’ funds. A legal opinion was drafted against him to compel repayment, and they went around to the muftis, but none of them signed except the judge Jalāl al-Dīn ibn Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Ḥanafī. I saw his handwriting on it alone after the prayer, and I was asked to add mine, yet I refused because of the disturbance it would cause the authorities.”

Scholarly Stances
These accurate and bold stands show that Ibn Kathīr was neither a mere compiler nor a heedless gatherer in the dark; rather, his own personality is ever-present, and his alert mind is plainly visible in the following examples:

– His defence of al-Ṭabarī:
He writes in al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah (12/59): “Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī died at sunset on Sunday evening, two days before the end of Shawwāl in the year 310 AH. He had surpassed eighty by five or six years, and there remained a good deal of black in the hair of his head and beard. He was buried in his house because some of the common …”