An expert on tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis), tarikh (history) and fiqh (jurisprudence), he is considered a leading authority on Sunni Islam.
He wrote several books, including a fourteen-volume universal history titled al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya (Arabic: البداية والنهاية).
His methodology largely derives from his teacher Ibn Taymiyya, and differs from that of other earlier renowned exegetes such as Tabari.
He was born in Mijdal, a village on the outskirts of the city of Busra, in the east of Damascus, Syria, around about AH 701 (AD 1300/1).
Upon completion of his studies he obtained his first official appointment in 1341, when he joined an inquisitorial commission formed to determine certain questions of heresy.
[16] He attributes his blindness to working late at night on the Musnad of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal in an attempt to rearrange it topically rather than by narrator.
[17] The records from modern researchers such as Taha Jabir Alalwani, Yazid Abdu al Qadir al-Jawas, and Barbara Stowasser has demonstrated important similarities between Ibn Kathir and his influential master Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, such as rejecting logical exegesis of Qur'an, advocating a militant jihad and adhering to the renewal of one singular Islamic ummah.
[28] Taha Jabir Alalwani, Professor and President of Cordoba University in Ashburn, Virginia maintains that these traditionalistic views of Ibn Kathir claimed by Salafists were rooted further to the generation of Sahaba Salaf, where Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, one of The ten to whom Paradise was promised also taught this view.
[38] Although Ibn Kathir claimed to rely on at-Tabari, he introduced new methods and differs in content, in attempt to clear Islam from that he evaluates as Isra'iliyyat.
[40] Ibn Kathir's Tafsir work has played major impact in the contemporary movements of Islamic reform.