IBN ‘ASĀKIR BEGINS the biographical portion of his TMD with his biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, listing him under one of his other appellations, Aḥmad. Muḥammad is followed by the other Aḥmads, after which Ibn ‘Asākir orders his biographies alphabetically, beginning with the name Abān. One of the more unfortunate lacunae in the manuscripts that have come down to us directly follows the biography of the Prophet. The next Aḥmad we have is. certain Al;mad ibn ‘Uṭba (d. 369/979). Thus, we have no record of men named Aḥmad whose fathers’ names began with any of the letters preceding the letter ‘ayn, several of which are among the most common names in the Arabic language. Missing are names such as Aḥmad; the prophetic names Ibrahim (Abraham), lsḥāq (Isaac) and Ismā'll (Ishmael); the names of the Prophet's two grandsons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn; the very common ‘Abd Allāh, ‘Abd al-Raḥtmān, ‘Abd al-'Azlz, etc. and some of the most common Umayyad-period names such as Abān, Bishr and Umayya. Even with such common names of fathers missing, we still have 333 biographies of men named Aḥmad. One can only imagine how many more biographies we would have had we access to the full complement of Aḥmads-possibly another full volume's worth. In fact. Ibn Manẓūr includes 203 Aḥmads before Aḥmad ibn ‘Uṭba in his Mukhtaṣar.