In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. O God, bless and grant peace to our master Muhammad and his family and companions. Praise be to God, the Greatest Giver, free from likeness and partner, whose favor encompasses the eloquent and the mute. The All-Hearing, the All-Seeing, from whose hearing and sight nothing is hidden, He exists. And I bear witness that our master and lord, Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the best of those on earth and in the heavens, a testimony that clarifies the heart and quenches thirst after its dryness. And thereafter, a group of brothers, may God shower upon us and them the clouds of His bounty and dwell us and them in the highest paradises, by the honor of the master of the descendants of Adnan, asked me to chronicle for them the rule of Sudan and mention the virtues of its saints and nobles. So I answered their request after seeking guidance through prayer, as is established in the Sunnah, and inspiration. And our predecessors and their predecessors did not establish anything in this regard, except that their news is widely transmitted among the common and the elite. Some of it reached the rebels among them, so I wished to mention what has become famous and widely transmitted of that news. This is because the transmitted news, according to the scholars of Usul, is among the certain categories that provide knowledge of a thing and negate doubt, conjecture, and illusion from it. So I followed the example of a group of hadith scholars, jurists, and historians. They wrote in history and virtues, such as the words of Imam Abd al-Ghaffar al-Farsi in the History of Nishapur, and al-Jalal al-Suyuti in the book "Hasn al-Muhadara fi Akhbar Misr wa al-Qahira" (The Excellent Lecture on the News of Egypt and Cairo), and al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar, who wrote a book on the virtues of the scholars of his era called "Al-Durra al-Kamina fi A'yan al-Mi'a al-Thamina" (The Hidden Pearl on the Notables of the Eighth Century), and Sheikh Ahmad al-Maghribi, who wrote a book called "Nafh al-Tib fi Akhbar Ibn al-Khatib" (The Fragrant Breeze on the News of Ibn al-Khatib). Then, before proceeding to our main purpose, it is incumbent upon us to mention something of God's praise for His prophets and messengers in His noble book, and we say, and with God is all success. God Almighty said concerning Adam, peace be upon him: "And when your Lord said to the angels, 'Indeed, I will create a human being from clay.'" (Quran 38:71) and His saying, Almighty, "When your Lord said..."