Ibn abd al-Malik al-Marrakushi

Who was Ibn abd al-Malik al-Marrakushi?

Ibn abd al-Malik al-Marrakushi or al-Murrakushi was a Moroccan scholar, historian, judge and biographer. He is the author of the famous book ad-Dayl wa Takmila, a substantial collection of biographies of notable people from Morocco and al-Andalus. The book is composed of 9 volumes of some 700 page each of which only 4 volumes reached us entirely. It contains many intricate details such as the exact pronunciation of names which isn't always accurately rendered in the Arabic writing system.

In 1300 Ibn abd al-Malik left Marrakech following the court of the Marinid King Abu Yaqub Yusuf an-Nasr and settled in Mansourah, where the Marinids were besieging Tlemcen in an attempt to oust the Abd al-Wadid dynasty. He seems to have died there three years later in September 1303, though there were reports of him being at Aghmat only three months earlier.

Ibn abd al-Malik spent his life writing his biographical dictionary "ad-Dayl wa Takmila" which he finished only a few months before his death. The book was originally designed to complete the works of Ibn Bashkuwal and Ibn al-Faradi but eventually surpassed them.