The supplement appended to the end of Ibn Kathīr’s History is in fact his own work, and the credit for first establishing this truth belongs to Professor Muḥammad Rāghib al-Ṭabbākh, who offered his valuable observations on the subject.

After this article had been written, Professor Yūsuf al-ʿIsh read it and drew my attention to Ibn Ḥajar’s book Inbāʾ al-Ghumr. On consulting it, I found that in the preface he says:

“This is an annotation in which I have collected the events of the age that I have witnessed since my birth in [773 AH]. From the standpoint of events, this book is well suited to serve as a supplement to the supplement of the History of the ḥāfiẓ ʿImād al-Dīn Ibn Kathīr, for he concluded his chronicle with that very year.” End of quote.

His words are clear and support our position; they also tell us that the printed edition of Ibn Kathīr’s History is missing the events of the last five years. — Muḥammad Aḥmad Dahmān

Afterwards: Allah (may He be Glorified and Exalted) enabled me to edit and publish al-Dhayl al-Tām li-Tārīkh Duwal al-Islām by the ḥāfiẓ, historian, and imam Shams al-Dīn Abū al-Khair Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī (d. 902 AH, may Allah have mercy on him). I am convinced that none of those who have written on this point has examined what al-Sakhāwī says in that work; otherwise, what he records would surely have been noticed and cited.

The appearance of this book coincided with my work on editing the sixteenth volume of al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah, and that is solely by my Lord’s favor and grace.

What struck me was the frequency with which al-Sakhāwī cites Ibn Kathīr. I therefore surveyed those quotations and compared them with what has been said about the supplement to Ibn Kathīr’s History, and I reached the following conclusions:

First: Al-Sakhāwī lived not long after Ibn Kathīr; he was a student of Ibn Ḥajar, the author of Inbāʾ al-Ghumr, who regarded his own work as a supplement to Ibn Kathīr’s. He was also a contemporary of Aḥmad ibn Ḥajjī and Ibn Qāḍī Shuhbah, to whom the supplement has been attributed. Since Ibn Kathīr’s History is one of al-Sakhāwī’s principal sources, it would have been possible—indeed inevitable—for him to mention this disputed attribution had it been true; yet he says nothing of the sort.

Second: His quotations from Ibn Kathīr are verbatim. I offer a few samples for reference:

– Under the year (745 AH), on page (69), al-Sakhāwī, in the matter of killing dogs in Damascus, writes: Ibn Kathīr said, “It would have been better to kill them all completely and then burn them …”.

– Under the year (749 AH), p. (97), al-Sakhāwī, while discussing the plague in Cairo, writes: Ibn Kathīr said, “Those who give the higher figure say thirty; those who give the lower say eleven …”.