Ibn Khallikan


Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Abu ’l-ʿAbbās S̲h̲ams al-Dīn al-Barmakī al-Irbilī al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, ibn Khallikān was a 13th-century Shafi'i Islamic scholar who compiled the celebrated biographical encyclopedia of Arab scholars, Wafayāt al-Aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ Abnāʾ az-Zamān.

Life

Ibn Khallikān was born in Arbil, Iraq on September 22, 1211, into a respectable family that claimed descent from Barmakids. His primary studies took him from Arbil, to Aleppo and to Damascus, before he took up jurisprudence in Mosul and then in Cairo, where he settled. He gained prominence as a jurist, theologian and grammarian. An early biographer described him as "a pious man, virtuous, and learned; amiable in temper, in conversation serious and instructive. His exterior was highly prepossessing, his countenance handsome and his manners engaging."
He married in 1252 and was assistant to the chief judge in Egypt until 1261, when he assumed the position of chief judge in Damascus. He lost this position in 1271 and returned to Egypt, where he taught until being reinstated as judge in Damascus in 1278. He retired in 1281 and died in Damascus on October 30, 1282.

Wafayāt al-Aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ Abnāʾ az-Zamān

. Begun in 1256 this eight-volume biographical reference dictionary of Islamic scholarship and literature was completed in 1274. Khallikān documented the lives of notable cultural figures, the celebrated writers, scientists, religious and legal scholars. Complementary to the popular religio-political biographies of the Prophet Muhammad and of the caliphs, it is primarily a literary work. An English translation by William McGuckin de Slane, in four volumes, published between 1801–1878, runs to over 2,700 pages. The British scholar Reynold A. Nicholson called it the "best general biography ever written".