Afḍal al-Dīn Kirmānī, Tāj al-Zamān Aḥmad b. Ḥāmid, was a poet, historian and physician at the court of the Saljūqs of Kirmān, who lived from the mid-6th/12th century to the beginning of the 7th/13th. His date of birth is unknown. Afḍal al-Dīn was a courtier of the Kirmān Saljūq sultan Ṭughril (d. 563/1168), and in the dispute between the latter’s sons, Malik Arslān, Tūrān Shāh and Bahrām Shāh, he mostly sided with Malik Arslān. One of his masters and patrons was the Atābak Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad Buzqush (d. 582/1186), whose dīwān al-inshāʾ (chancery) was …