10 – Volume Ten:
283 folios, measuring 29 × 9.5 cm, with 27 lines to a page. It forms part of a composite codex, shelf-number 14516.
Al-Nihāyah fī al-Fitan wa-l-Malāḥim:
Folios 285–466 of the same manuscript (no. 14516 T 1), measuring 29.5 × 19.5 cm, with 26 lines to a page.
In the Aḥmadiyyah copy al-Bidāyah ends with the obituaries for the year 738 AH. The Aḥmadiyyah manuscript is complete up to that year and carefully corrected; headings and sub-headings are written in red. The script is an ordinary naskh. Neither the scribe’s name nor the date of copying is given.
The binding is decorated, and on the first page of the first volume there are ownership notes dated 874 AH and 923 AH, along with other undated notes of ownership and readings.
Second – The Berlin Copy:
Designated by the letter “B,” this copy is kept in the National Library of Berlin. It opens with a page of ownership statements. On the second page the title appears as follows:
“Volume One of al-Bidāyah wa-l-Nihāyah by the great ḥāfiẓ, the eminent scholar ʿImād al-Dīn Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl ibn Kathīr – may God have mercy on him –
Table of contents for this volume.”
On the right-hand side of the page the scribe has written, in the hand of al-ʿAllāmah Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī, three verses praising the study of history, quoted from Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī’s Mirʾāt al-Zamān and originally composed by al-Qāḍī al-Ardalī (al-Ṭawīl metre):
If a man learns the tales of ages past,
You would deem him alive since the dawn of time;
You would think he has outlived the end of his span
For he left behind the fairest remembrance.
Whoever is learned, gentle, and generous
Has lived all ages and reaped the longest life.
This copy begins with the opening of Volume One and ends with the obituaries for the year 738 AH. Its margins contain annotations; headings and sub-headings are penned in a different colour. The script is an old naskh. It comprises 780 folios, measuring 20 × 13 cm, with 30 lines to a page. It was copied by Muḥammad ibn Sulṭān ibn Saʿīd al-Baʿlī al-Ḥanbalī—may Allah pardon him by His grace—and no date of copying is recorded.