It is considered one of the most enjoyable biographies books that benefit readers and researchers. It is an abbreviation of his massive book (History of Islam). He has other useful and beneficial books on biographies of men, such as: his massive book (History of Islam), (Mizan al-I'tidal fi Naqd al-Rijal), (Tadhkirat al-Huffaz), and others. However, the layers of the book began from the era of the Companions to the era of the author. Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi arranged his book according to layers, as he made it into approximately forty layers, and this is his style in presenting biographies. Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi's books on biographies differ in terms of the number of layers and do not agree.

Benefits of the Book: The book has great benefits, including: viewing the biographies of the Companions, the Followers, and the scholars who came after them, as well as the biographies of the Caliphs, political leaders, and even the masters of religions, sects, and philosophers. You will even find discussion of Genghis Khan and other political leaders who influenced Islamic history. The author retracts several things he mentioned in his massive book (History of Islam), learning about some historical facts and political events that occurred throughout Islamic history up to the author's time. Benefiting from the knowledge of Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi in Islamic sciences, as he discussed many scholarly issues in creed, jurisprudence, interpretation, hadith, and other Islamic sciences. Benefiting from Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi's rulings on hadiths in terms of acceptance, rejection, explanation, and interpretation. He is a great scholar of hadith, and he ruled on many of the hadiths in this book. The nature of the biographies in the book and the basis for their selection. Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi was one of the most prominent biographers and had extensive knowledge, especially in biographies. Therefore, he used a unique method in selecting his biographies and established many foundations for them. These foundations can be summarized as follows: 1- Scientific: Al-Dhahabi included all the famous and prominent figures, and excluded the obscure and unknown ones. 2- Qualitative comprehensiveness: He was not limited to a specific type of figures, but rather his biographies were diverse and included many categories of people: caliphs, kings, sultans, judges, ministers, hadith scholars, jurists, writers, doctors, linguists, grammarians, poets, leaders of various religions and sects, theologians, philosophers, and a group of those concerned with pure sciences. 3- Spatial comprehensiveness: Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi worked to ensure that his book was comprehensive of biographies of prominent figures from all parts of the Islamic world, from Andalusia in the west to the far east. 4- Temporal Balance: Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi tried to balance the number of prominent figures he mentioned over the seven-century period covered in the book. We did not find him favoring one era over another. 5- Length and Shortness of Biographies: There is no doubt that Al-Hafiz Al-Dhahabi did not write all of his knowledge in biographies of prominent figures in this book, as he was widely read in the biographies of men. Therefore, we notice in this book that he has limited translations. For example, we find him writing more than a hundred pages about Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, while we find him translating Genghis Khan or Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi in less than one page. This, of course, is due to the benefit hoped for from the translator, as the biography of Ahmad ibn Hanbal contains precious and rare things that are worth mentioning and benefiting from.