[1][2] This immense encyclopedic work contains more than 7,831 biographies of the lives of scholars, thinkers, aristocrats, famous men and women connected to Baghdad from the earliest period of the city.

In this book, the author includes previous lost manuscripts that explain the history of Baghdad.

[3] Nonetheless, it served as a reference for verifying the reliability of Hadith transmitters and also a valuable source for saints.

[6] Several supplements (continuation) were made for Tarikh Baghdad and among them were:[7][8] This book would inspire later historians to write their own version of encyclopaedia of their major cities such as Ibn Asakir who authored History of Damascus.

Ostensibly a history of Baghdad, it is more specifically a reference work in narrator-authentication (‘ilm al-rijâl) and a valuable compendium of 4,385 hadiths narrated with their full chains, over half of them (2,253) not found in the two books of Sahih and the four Sunan.