Ibn Kathir Biography

Imam 'Imad al-Din Isma'il ibn 'Umar ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi was a fourteenth-century Syrian historian, jurist, hadith scholar, and exegete, best known to the Muslim world today for his Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim — universally known as Tafsir Ibn Kathir — and his monumental world history al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya. Born in 701 AH / 1300 CE in the village of Mijdal near Bosra in southern Syria, he lost his father at the age of three and moved with his family to Damascus, where he received a comprehensive scholarly formation under the leading masters of his time, including al-Mizzi (whose daughter he later married), al-Birzali, and the controversial reformer Ibn Taymiyya, who became a profound and lasting influence.

Tafsir Ibn Kathir is the most widely read and translated work of classical Qur'anic exegesis. Methodologically it pioneered tafsir bi'l-ma'thur — interpreting the Qur'an by means of the Qur'an itself, then through authentic hadith, then through the statements of the Companions and their students — and it systematically excludes the Israelite traditions and weak narrations that had accumulated in earlier commentaries. Al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya ('The Beginning and the End') is a fourteen-volume universal history covering creation through prophetic biographies, early Islam, the caliphates, and the author's own time, ending with the eschatological narratives of the end of days. Ibn Kathir also authored a hadith primer Ikhtisar 'Ulum al-Hadith, the Sira al-Nabawiyya, and works on jurisprudence and Qur'anic readings.

Ibn Kathir lost his sight near the end of his life and died in Damascus in 774 AH / 1373 CE, where he was buried alongside his teacher Ibn Taymiyya at the Sufi cemetery. His tafsir remains the standard reference for English-speaking Muslims through Mukhtasar Tafsir Ibn Kathir, the abridgement edited by Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri and published by Darussalam, which has introduced his methodology to a new generation worldwide.