The fourteenth century Damascene scholar, Abu’l-Fida’ Isma‘il b. ‘Umar b. Kathir (d. 773 AH/1373 CE) is perhaps best known as a student of the controversial Hanbali preacher Taqi’l-Din Ahmad b. Taymiya (d. 728/1328). An important scholar in his own right, Ibn Kathir, like Ibn Taymiya, was a vehement defender of Sunni orthodoxy and argued in favor of a return to the Qur’an and the Sunna. In his universal history, Al-Bidaya wa’l-Nihaya, and his Qur’an exegesis, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-Azim, his tone is especially defensive in this regard, but to what ends was he willing to go in order to prove his point? In the sira section of his Al-Bidaya, his most virulent attacks are reserved for reports that seem to support the Shi‘i position favoring ‘Ali b. Abi Talib’s (d. 41/661) immediate succession to the Prophet Muhammad (d. 11/632). A comparison of these two works reveals that, when faced with such reports, Ibn Kathir was not only willing to refute those whose chains of authority contained questionable, i.e., Shi‘i, reporters, but also those reports whose isnads contained otherwise respected authorities, including those found in the Six Books of authoritative hadith. He then provides his own, more doctrinally acceptable, interpretation of what the texts of these reports actually mean and often incorporates quotations from the Qur’an to bolster his claims. Although he seems to follow the accepted pattern of first judging a report’s isnad and then its text, using the Qur’an for support, an examination of his tafsir of these verses shows that he contradicts himself, claiming one interpretation of a verse in his history, while putting forward a very different interpretation in his work of exegesis. Thus, Ibn Kathir’s support of a return to the Qur’an and Sunna is countered by his manipulation of these very sources. The larger significance of this issue is tied to the importance of Ibn Kathir himself. Ibn Kathir remains an under-studied figure in the intellectual history of Islamic civilization, despite - or perhaps because of - modern Wahhabi support for his works. However, a close textual analysis of these works can provide scholars with a more accurate assessment not only of the role of anti-Shi‘i sentiment in Mamluk Damascus, but also of Ibn Kathir’s place in the broader field of Islamic intellectual history itself.