'Alī ibn Mākūlā


Abū Naṣr Alī ibn Hibat-Allāh ibn Ja'far ibn Allakān ibn Muḥammad ibn Dulaf ibn Abī Dulaf al-Qāsim ibn ‘Īsā al-Ijlī, surnamed Sa’d al-Muluk and known as Ibn Mākūlā ; was a highly regarded muḥaddith who authored several works. His magnum opus was his biographical-genealogical history on etymology and orthography of Islamic names, Al-Ikmāl.

Life

Abū Naṣr ibn Mākūlā was a native of the village Ukbara on the Tigris north of Baghdād and the son of Hibat-Alāhā ibn Makula, vizier to the Buyid ruler of Baṣrah, Jalāl-al-dawla.
He gained the title ‘al-Amīr’, or ‘prince’, maybe in his own right, or in reference to his famous ancestor Abū Dulaf al-Ijlī. His family had originally come from Jarbāzakān, between Hamadān and Isfahan in Irān, but his paternal uncle, was a muḥaddith, and qāḍī in Baghdād where Ibn Mākūlā began his studies. He continued his education by travelling to the regional centres of learning across Irāq, Khurāsān, Syria, Egypt, and Fars. In the last years of his life he held various official posts in the imperial administration of the Seljuk Empire, and once led an embassy to Bukhara to obtain the recognition of the new Abbāsid caliph Al-Muqtadi.
One anecdote tells of a personal application made by Ibn Mākūlā on behalf of the grammarian Al-Akhfash the Younger, requesting a pension from the vizier Abū al-Ḥasan Alī ibn ‘Īsā. This was angrily rejected it seems and the scholar was left in abject poverty.
In the account of his eventual assassination the sources differ on details of location and date. It seems that sometime, either in 475 h. or 487 h. , or 479 h. , he was on a trip for Khurāsān when he was murdered and robbed by his Mamluk guards, either in Jurjan in Golestan Province, or al-Ahvaz in Khuzestan; or in Kirmān, Iran.

Works

— In 1232, muhaddith Ibn Nukta, published Takmila al-Ikmāl, as an addendum to Al-Ikmāl.