ibn ʿAlkān ibn Muḥammad ibn Dulaf ibn Abī Dulaf al-Tamīmī—the amir, Saʿd al-Mulk, Abū Naṣr, better known as Ibn Mākolā.
He was one of the foremost authorities on ḥadith and a leader among princes. He travelled widely, collected an immense body of reports, and produced several works.
Among them is al-Ikmāl fī al-mushtabih min asmāʾ al-rijāl (The Perfection on the Ambiguous Names of Narrators), a magnificent book with no precedent; the only supplement to it is what Ibn Nuqṭa added in a volume he entitled al-Istidrāk (The Addendum).
His own mamluks murdered him in Kirmān in this very year. He had been born in 420 AH, so he lived fifty-five years.
Ibn Khallikān said: it is also reported that he was killed in 479 AH, or in 485, or in 486 AH (1). He added: his father served as vizier to al-Qādir Billāh (2), and his uncle ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥusayn held the judicature of Baghdad. He went on: I do not know why he was called “the amir” unless it be because of his forebear, the amir Abū Dulaf. His family originally came from Jarbadhaqān (3), and he was born in ʿUkbarā in Shaʿbān 421 AH.
He further related that al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī had earlier compiled a work entitled al-Muʾtanaf, in which he combined the two books of al-Dāraquṭnī and ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Saʿīd on the similarly written and similarly pronounced names (al-muʾtalif wa-l-mukhtalif). Ibn Mākolā expanded that work and called his version al-Ikmāl. It is supremely beneficial—[dispelling confusion and fixing orthography]—nothing comparable had been produced, and after it no further proof of his merit is needed; the book itself testifies to his wide reading, accuracy, careful editing, and mastery.
Some of his verse says:
“Strike your tents and leave a land where you are humiliated;
Shun abasement, for abasement must be shunned.
Depart when your homeland diminishes your worth;
For fresh sandal-wood, in the land where it grows, is but fire-wood.” (4)(5)
[Then the year 476 AH began]
Events of the year:
ʿAmīd al-Dawlah ibn Jahīr was removed from the vizierate of the caliphate. He set out with his family and children to the Sultan and approached the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk, who invested his son Fakhr al-Dawlah with authority over the lands of Diyār Bakr; so he departed thither bearing the robes of investiture.