Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Muhammad ibn Ishaq, The Life of 

Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul 

Allah. Translated by Alfred Guillaume (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1955); Gordon Darnell Newby, The 

Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earli-

est Biography of Muhammad (Columbia: University of 

South Carolina Press, 1989).

Ibn Kathir, Imad al-Din Ismail ibn Umar

  

(1301–1373)  leading Syrian historian, Quran 

commentator, and scholar of hadith

Ibn Kathir was born in Busra, s

yria

, and edu-

cated in the m

amlUk

 

madrasas

 of d

amascUs

.

One of his most prominent teachers was t

aqi

al

-d

in

 a

hmad

 

ibn

 t

aymiyya

 (d. 1328), the fore-

most Hanbali jurist of the Middle Ages, but he 

considered himself a follower of the s

haFii

 l

egal

s

chool

. Ibn Kathir became one of a circle of 

leading 

Ulama

 who were consulted by Mamluk 

rulers and held several minor appointments 

at local 

mosqUe

s and madrasas. He is famous 

among Muslims around the world today for his 

tafsir

 (q

Uran

 commentary), which uses 

hadith

to illuminate meanings of the scripture. He 

also authored a compendium of hadith, which 

assembled the six major Sunni collections plus 

additional hadith in one work. Among scholars 

of medieval Islam, his book on Islamic history, 

Al-Bidaya wa’l-Nihaya (The beginning and the 

end) is held in high esteem. It is 14 volumes 

long in its modern print edition and provides 

a lengthy biography of m

Uhammad

, a history of