Ibn al-Athir

Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī (علي عز الدین بن الاثیر الجزري; 1160–1233) was a Hadith expert, historian, and biographer who wrote in Arabic and was from the Ibn Athir family. 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
Ibn al-Athir belonged to the Shayban lineage of the large and influential Arab tribe Banu Bakr, who lived across upper Mesopotamia, and gave their name to the city of Diyar Bakr. He is also described to have been of Kurdish origin.

He 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
Ibn al-Athir died in 1232/1233, and was buried in a cemetery in Mosul, at the district of Bab Sinjar. His tomb was built in the 20th century and was located in the middle of a road, after the cemetery was cleared for modernization. It became a site of an erroneous legend, which identified it as a tomb of a female mystic. However, the government later installed a marble stele to indicate that it was Ibn al-Athir's tomb. 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.

The tomb of Ibn al-Athir was bulldozed by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in June 2014.

Works

 * Al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh (الكامل في التاريخ): "The Complete History"; 11 volumes
 * al-Usd al-ghābah fi ma‘rifat al-ṣaḥābah: "The Lions of the Forest and the knowledge about the Companions"
 * Jami' al-Usul fi Ahadeth ar-Rasul, a massive collection of Hadith (14 large volumes).
 *  n-Nihayatu fi Gharib al-Hadith wa al-Athar, a classical work on Gharib branch of Hadith terminology where Al-Suyuti said: "This is the best books of rare terms (ghareeb), the most complete, best known and most widely used."
 * 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