The beginning and the end

The beginning and the end

It is a huge historical encyclopedic work, written by Ibn Katheer Ismail bin Omar al-Dimashqi, who died in the year 774 AH. It is a presentation of history from the beginning of creation to its end. It begins with the beginning of the creation of the heavens, the earth, and the angels to the creation of Adam. Then it touches on the stories of the prophets briefly, and then details the historical events from the resurrection of the Prophet Muhammad until The year 768 AH by tabulating the years. The Sunnah begins by saying, “Then a year has entered…” Then he lists the historical events in it, then mentions the most prominent people who died in this year. As for the end part, it contains the signs of the Hour until Judgment Day in detail.

When we present this historical encyclopedic book ((The Beginning and the End)) in its sixth edition (21) volumes after concerted collective efforts of correcting, amending and revising the content of the book, and bringing its scientific material closer to completion, and reaching what the author, Al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir - may God Almighty have mercy on him - wanted. In what he wrote or dictated, objectively and literally, we will summarize it as follows:

1- Correcting typographical errors, after reading all the parts carefully and benefiting from the corrections of the audit and review unit in the Qatari Ministry of Endowments with honesty and high accuracy. The first batch arrived in 2015 AD and was corrected, and the second batch in 2020 AD, we received successively and it is repaired as required.

2- A modification in the placement of hams and movements in the formed words to match the correct spelling.

3- Correcting the titles of the topics in the letterhead after matching them in all parts.

4- Adding after the headings in parentheses like this [ ] to increase clarification and when necessary.

5- Recognizing some translations or parts of them, and putting the prosodic weight before the poetic verses in some parts to complete the unified approach in the investigation of the book.