He was a venerable shaykh, an accomplished man of letters and poetry, and a masterful reciter, descended from a family of leadership and vizieral rank. He held the vizierate of Damascus for a period, then resided in Egypt for some time. He devoted himself to the science of ḥadith—listening to it and transmitting it (1). He authored a work on the Companions whose reports are cited in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, inserting some of their narrations in two large volumes that were endowed to the Nāṣiriyyah madrasah in Damascus. His scholarly discussions were clear and precise in both wording and meaning. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dimyāṭī transmitted ḥadith on his authority and was the last of his teachers to pass away.
He died in Cairo on Friday, the twenty-first of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir. The family originally came from Qaysariyyah (2).
His grandfather, Muwaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-Baqāʾ Khālid (3), served as vizier to Nūr al-Dīn the Martyr. He ranked among the finest and most exacting chancery secretaries, renowned for an exceptionally elegant hand, and he died in the days of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, in 588 AH.
His father, Muḥammad b. Naṣr b. Ṣaghīr (4), was born in Acre before the Franks captured it in 478 AH. When they seized it again in 492 AH (5), the family moved to Aleppo, where they remained. He was an outstanding poet with a celebrated dīwān, and he possessed solid knowledge of astronomy, cosmology, and other sciences.
[Biography of the father (may Allah have mercy on him)] (6)
In that same year the father passed away. He was the preacher Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. Kathīr b. Ḍawʾ b. Kathīr b. Ḍawʾ b. Daraʿ al-Qurashī, of the clan of Banū Khuṣaylah (7), who lay claim to noble lineage. They possess written genealogies, portions of which were examined by our shaykh al-Mizzī; he found them pleasing and gratifying, and therefore began to add “al-Qurashī” to my lineage.
He hailed from a village called al-Sharkawīn (8), west of Busra, situated between it and Adhruʿāt. He was born there about 640 AH, pursued knowledge with his maternal uncles, the Banū ʿUqbah, in Busra, studied al-Bidāyah (9) in the Ḥanafī school, and memorised the Jumal of al-Zajjājī.