His name was Abul Hassan Ezadin Ali. He was born in 1160 in Jazira and Botan.
This great Kurdish historian, like all other writers and scholars of that time, did not go beyond the boundaries of Islam and Arabic language.
He was the brother of Majd ad-Din and Diya' ad-Din 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.
His most important work is el-kamil fi el-ta’rikh(the complete history) which is a history book that has 12 volumes that talks about the history of mankind from it’s birth (starting with the creation of Adam) until mid of thirteenth century. Long a standard work, this history has been criticized in the 20th century for being somewhat derivative.
Ibn al-Asir quoted most of al-Kamil from Tarikh al-Tabari with his own changes, but added a lot to them. The sections on the events after Tabari's death were written by Ibnul Asir himself.
Ibn al-Asir's work has long attracted the attention of historians as an important historical source, and in 1851 the European orientalist Thorenberg began publishing al-Kamil.
Among his other works were compilations of biographical and genealogical material of earlier authors. Ibn al-Asir died in 1234 in Mosul.
According to Reuters, his tomb was desecrated in Mosul by members of the al-Qaeda offshoot the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in June 2014.[1]