Author Biography and His Dictionary of Eminent Men

Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn Abi Bakr ibn Khallikan was born in Irbil (Erbil in modern Iraq) in 608 AH (1211 CE) into a family of Kurdish origin that claimed descent from the Barmakid family of the early Abbasid period. He received an excellent education in his native city and in Mosul before traveling to Syria and Egypt, where he eventually settled and pursued a distinguished judicial and scholarly career.

Ibn Khallikan served as a Shafi'i judge (qadi) in Damascus on multiple occasions — a position he first held under the Ayyubid sultan and later under the early Mamluk regime — and was recognized as one of the foremost legal scholars of his generation. His personal relationships with major political figures of the era, including the brilliant Ayyubid prince and scholar al-Malik al-Ashraf, gave him access to information and sources that enriched his biographical work.

His major work, Wafayat al-A'yan wa Anba Abna az-Zaman (Deaths of Eminent Men and News of the Sons of the Age), universally known as Wafayat al-A'yan or Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, is one of the most celebrated biographical dictionaries in Islamic literary history. Composed over many years and completed in 672 AH (1274 CE), it contains entries for approximately 865 notable figures organized alphabetically.

Wafayat al-A'yan is distinguished from other Islamic biographical dictionaries by several qualities: the elegant Arabic literary prose in which it is written, the breadth of its scope (including scholars, rulers, literary figures, and others, not only hadith scholars), the literary quotations it preserves, and its inclusion of entertaining anecdotes alongside scholarly information. These qualities made it as much a work of adab (belles-lettres) as a scholarly reference.

Ibn Khallikan died in Damascus in 681 AH (1282 CE), leaving behind a biographical dictionary that has been read by scholars and educated readers across the Arab world ever since its composition.