Izz ad-Dīn Abū al-Hasan Ibn al-Athīr | |
|---|---|
| Title | Al-Hafiz Izz ad-Din |
| Personal life | |
| Born | May 12, 1160 CE, Jazirat Ibn Umar, present-day Cizre, Seljuk Empire |
| Died | 630 AH (1232/1233CE), Mosul, Ayyubid dynasty[1] |
| Era | Islamic golden age |
| Main interest(s) | Hadith, History |
| Notable work(s) | The Complete History and The Lions of the Forest and the knowledge about the Companions |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Sunni |
| Jurisprudence | Shafi'i[2] |
| Creed | Ash'ari[3][4] |
| Muslim leader | |
Influenced by | |
Influenced | |
| Part of a series on |
| Ash'arism |
|---|
 |
| Background |
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī (Arabic: علي عز الدین بن الاثیر الجزري; 1160–1233) was a Hadith expert, historian, and biographer of Arab descent who wrote in Arabic and was from the Ibn Athir family.[5] At the age of twenty-one he settled with his father in Mosul to continue his studies, where he devoted himself to the study of history and Islamic tradition.
Biography
[edit]Ibn al-Athir belonged to the Shayban lineage[6] of the large and influential Arab tribe Banu Bakr,[7][8][9] who lived across upper Mesopotamia, and gave their name to the city of Diyar Bakr.[10][11][12] He is also described to have been of Kurdish origin.[13]
In the analysis of Sharafnama , Historian Naji Ma'ruf notes that its author, Emir Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, explicitly identified a number of scholars and families of Arab origin, stating their lineage without ambiguity. However, in the Arabic translation of the work, these same individuals are often presented in a way that may lead readers to assume they were Kurds, despite the original text confirming their Arab heritage. According to Ma‘ruf, Arabs constitute more than half of the figures mentioned in Sharafnama, even though the work primarily concerns the history of Kurdish states and emirates. As an example, Ma‘ruf cites the historian Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari and his brothers Diyā' ad-Dīn Ibn Athir and Majd ad-Dīn Ibn Athir, who, according to all major Arabic biographical sources, were Arabs of the Banu Shayban tribe. In the translator’s footnotes to the Arabic edition , Ibn al-Athir is described as Kurdish, a claim that is unfounded and contrary to Sharaf Khan’s own statements.[14]
As above mentioned, Ibn al athir was the brother of Majd ad-Dīn and Diyā' ad-Dīn Ibn Athir. Al-Athir lived a scholarly life in Mosul, often visited Baghdad and for a time traveled with Saladin's army in Syria. He later lived in Aleppo and Damascus. His chief work was a history of the world, al-Kamil fi at-Tarikh (The Complete History).
Death
[edit]Ibn al-Athir died in 1232/1233, and was buried in a cemetery in Mosul, at the district of Bab Sinjar.[15] His tomb was built in the 20th century and was located in the middle of a road, after the cemetery was cleared for modernization.[16] It became a site of an erroneous legend, which identified it as a tomb of a female mystic.[17] However, the government later installed a marble stele to indicate that it was Ibn al-Athir's tomb.[18][19] His tomb was also regarded in local Yazidi folklore as being the grave of a girl who married the Emir of Mosul but died of poisoning.[20]
The tomb of Ibn al-Athir was bulldozed by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in June 2014.[21]
Works
[edit]- Al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh (الكامل في التاريخ): "The Complete History"; 11 volumes[22]
- al-Usd al-ghābah fi ma‘rifat al-ṣaḥābah: "The Lions of the Forest and the knowledge about the Companions"
- Al-Qawl al-Jamil fi 'Ilm al-Jarh wa at-Ta'dil
- Al-Tārīkh al-bāhir fī al-Dawlah al-Atābakīyah bi-al-Mawṣil
- Al-Lubāb fī tahdhīb al-ansāb
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Fourth to Seventh century
- ^ Majd al-Din al-Mubarak bin Muhammad, Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari. الشافي شرح مسند الشافعي 1-3 ج3. Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah. p. 612.
- ^ Nevin Reda; Yasmin Amin, eds. (2020). Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice: Processes of Canonization Subversion and Change. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 247. ISBN 9780228002963.
'Ali ibn al-Athir 106 The Sunni historian and Ash'ari theologian Abū al-Hasan 'Izz al-Dīn 'Alī ibn Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Karīm ibn 'Abd al-Wāhid al-Jazarī al-Shaybānī was born in Cizre (Turkey) in 555/1160 and was of Arab descent.
- ^ 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn al-Tahir. "دور أبي ذر الهروي في نشر الأشعرية بالمغرب" [The role of Abu Dharr al-Harawi in the spread of Ash'ari theology in Morocco] (in Arabic). Muhammadiya Association of Scholars (al-Rabita al-Muhammadiyya lil-'Ulamā' in Morocco). Archived from the original on 13 Apr 2023.
- ^ Andersson, Tobias (16 October 2018). Early Sunnī Historiography A Study of the Tārīkh of Khalīfa B. Khayyāṭ. Brill. p. 62. ISBN 9789004383173.
- ^ Kamaruzaman, A.F., Jamaludin, N., Fadzil, A.F.M., 2015. [Ibn Al-Athir’s Philosophy of History in Al-Kamil Fi Al-Tarikh https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281910057_Ibn_Al-Athir's_Philosophy_of_History_in_Al-Kamil_Fi_Al-Tarikh]. Asian Social Science 11(23).
- ^ "Ibn al-Athīr". Oxford Reference. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 15 May 2025.
- ^ Donner, Fred McGraw. “The Bakr B. Wā'il Tribes and Politics in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam.” Studia Islamica, no. 51, 1980, pp. 5–38. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1595370.
- ^ "Ibn al-Athir". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 15 May 2025.
- ^ Trudy Ring, Noelle Watson, Paul Schellinger. 1995. International Dictionary of Historic Places. Vol. 3 Southern Europe. Routledge. P 190.
- ^ Canard, M., Cahen, Cl., Yinanç, Mükrimin H., and Sourdel-Thomine, J. ‘Diyār Bakr’. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Ed. P. Bearman et al. Brill Reference Online. Web. 16 Nov. 2019. Accessed on 16 November 2019.
- ^ a. Historiography of the Ayyubid and Mamluk epochs, Donald P. Little, The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol.1, ed. M. W. Daly, Carl F. Petry, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 415.
b. Ibn al-Athir, The A to Z of Islam, ed. Ludwig W. Adamec, (Scarecrow Press, 2009), 135.
c. Peter Partner, God of Battles: Holy wars of Christianity and Islam, (Princeton University Press, 1997), 96.
d. Venice and the Turks, Jean-Claude Hocquet, Venice and the Islamic world: 828–1797, edited by Stefano Carboni, (Editions Gallimard, 2006), 35 n17.
e. Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History, (Routledge, 1997), 6.
f. Martin Sicker, The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna, (Praeger Publishers, 2000), 69. - ^ 1. Philip G. Kreyenbroek , Oral Literature of Iranian Languages al-Athir..a historian and biographer of Kurdish origin
2. Yasir Suleiman, "Language and identity in the Middle East and North Africa", Curzon Press, 1996, ISBN 0700704108, p. 154. Ibn al-Athir, (d.1233), a Kurdish historian and biographer... - ^ * Ma'ruf, Naji (1977). عروبة العلماء المنسوبين إلى البلدان الأعجمية في بلاد الروم، الجزيره،و شهرزور،و اذربيجان [The Arab Origins of Scholars Attributed to Non-Arabs in the lands of the Romans, Al-Jazira, Shahrizor, and Azerbaijan] (in Arabic). Vol. 3. al-Shaʿb Press. p. 110.
لقد ذكر الامير شرف خان البدليسي في كتابه «الشرفنامة» عددا من العلماء ، والاسر العربية واشار بصراحة الى نسبهم العربي ، غير أن من يقرأ الشرفنامة في ترجمتها العربية يتوهم انهم من الاكراد وهم في الواقع عرب خلص كما نص البدليسي نفسه على ذلك ، وهم يؤلفون أكثر من نصف الكتاب بل يزيد عدد الامراء العرب كثيرا على عدد الامراء الآخرين كما سيلاحظ القارىء ذلك فيما يأتي على الرغم من أن كتاب الشرفنامة يبحث في تاريخ الدول والامارات الكردية . وأما تعليقات المترجم فلم يكن لأكثرها سند تاريخي ذلك انه كان يعجبه أن يضفي كلمة كردي» على كل رجل عربي وعلى كل اسرة عربية ولم يقل مثل ذلك البدليسي نفسه من ذلك : ما جاء في ص ۲۳ الحاشية (٥) عن عز الدين ابن الاثير الجزري فقد اعتبره المترجم كرديا مع انه عربي صميم من قبيلة شيبان هو واخواه ضياء الدين ومجد الدين كما تؤيد ذلك المصادر العربية كافة المدونة في تراجمهم في هذا الجزء
[In his book “Al-Sharafnama”, Prince Sharaf Khan Al-Bedlisi mentioned a number of scholars and Arab families and explicitly indicated their Arab lineage. However, whoever reads the Sharafnama in its Arabic translation would imagine that they were Kurds, but in reality they were pure Arabs, as Al-Bedlisi himself stated. They comprise more than half of the book. Indeed, the number of Arab princes far exceeds the number of other princes, as the reader will notice in what follows, despite the fact that the book “Al-Sharafnama” deals with the history of the Kurdish states and emirates. As for the translator’s comments, most of them had no historical basis, as he liked to attribute the word “Kurdish” to every Arab man and every Arab family. Al-Bedlisi himself did not say the same regarding: What is stated on page 23, footnote 5, about Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari, the translator considered him a Kurd, although he was a pure Arab from the Shaiban tribe, he and his brothers Diya’ al-Din and Majd al-Din, as is supported by all the Arab sources recorded in their biographies in this section.] - ^ "عز الدين بن الاثير وقبر البنت". omferas.com. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ "عز الدين بن الاثير وقبر البنت". omferas.com. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ "قبر البنت في باب سنجارفي الموصل". منتديات برطلي. 2023-11-21. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ "الموصل بعد 150 عاماً !". almadapaper.net. 20 July 2014. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ "عز الدين بن الاثير وقبر البنت". omferas.com. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ "قبر البنت في باب سنجارفي الموصل". منتديات برطلي. 2023-11-21. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
- ^ Isra' al-Rubei'i. "Iraqi forces ready push after Obama offers advisers." Reuters, June 20, 2014.[1]
- ^ Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh (Arabic)
External links
[edit]
- Ibn al-Athīr's Accounts of the Rūs: A Commentary and Translation by William E. Watson from Canadian/American Slavic Studies
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060708214517/http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/islhist.html
- http://www.bogvaerker.dk/Bookwright/rijal.html
- Kurds and Kurdistan, Encyclopaedia of Islam.
