He says: “And I was the preacher,” [i.e., ʿImād al-Dīn, the author himself—may Allah envelop him in His mercy]. All praise and gratitude belong to Allah.
What appears between the brackets is, quite obviously, meant to clarify the pronoun in the sentence “I was the preacher,” and this insertion comes from one of the author’s students or friends (1). The same kind of clarification occurs repeatedly; thus in ⦗245⦘: “On Saturday the tenth—that is, the tenth of the previously mentioned month, Shaʿbān in the year (753 AH)—we gathered [says Shaykh ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr, the author (may Allah have mercy on him)] with the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid Billāh.”
Likewise, in ⦗254⦘: “He—meaning Ibn Taymiyyah—composed on that subject a separate treatise which I [that is, Shaykh ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr] examined and found to be excellent in the extreme.”

Secondly, the author recounts works and qualities that fit no one but himself. Thus he says of al-Mizzī and al-Dhahabī ⦗190⦘: “Our shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn al-Mizzī, and our shaykh the ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī.” And in ⦗192⦘, speaking of his shaykh al-Mizzī, he writes: “His daughter Zaynab—my wife—narrated to us.” When he mentions Ibn Taymiyyah he says ⦗129⦘: “Our shaykh, the eminent scholar Ibn Taymiyyah,” or of his colleague Ibn al-Qayyim, the pupil of Ibn Taymiyyah, he writes ⦗202, 234⦘: “Our companion, the erudite Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb al-Zuraʿī, the imām of al-Jawziyyah.”

After recording the death of the ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī ⦗225⦘ he adds: “On Sunday the sixteenth of Dhū al-Qaʿdah I attended the Madrasah Umm al-Ṣāliḥ—may Allah have mercy on its founder—in place of Shaykh Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī. A number of leading jurists and some judges were present, and it was a well-attended lesson.”

If we consult the biography of the ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr we find that all these details fit him exactly. Al-Naʿīmī, in Tanbīh al-Ṭālib under the entry on Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyyah, states: “He became the son-in-law of the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Mizzī and kept his company; he learned much from Ibn Taymiyyah; he assumed the teaching post at the Madrasah Umm al-Ṣāliḥ after al-Dhahabī; he died in (774 AH) and was buried in the Ṣūfiyyah cemetery beside his shaykh Ibn Taymiyyah.” The same is recorded in Shadharāt al-Dhahab.

Moreover, the author names himself explicitly in two other places that admit of neither doubt nor interpretation. In ⦗317⦘: “When Friday the nineteenth of the month—namely Rabīʿ al-Ākhir—arrived, the three judges and a group of muftis were summoned. On the Shāfiʿī side came his two deputies, Qāḍī Shams al-Dīn al-Ghazzī and Qāḍī Badr al-Dīn ibn Wahbah, together with Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn ibn Qāḍī al-Zabadānī and the author ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr, and so on… We met with the deputy of the sultanate in the main hall and sat around him.”

And in ⦗256⦘: “In the month of Dhū al-Qaʿdah I came across a letter someone from the land of Tripoli had sent to a friend; in it he wrote: ‘The master informs Shaykh ʿImād al-Dīn of what has taken place in the coastal regions.’”

These, then, are conclusive proofs