to his companions and say, “Give back my manuscript and make it available so that it may be copied.” Yet, because of their eagerness for it, they would not return it, and because of their inability they would not copy it; thus the work would disappear and no one would know its title or where it had gone (1).

For these and other reasons it proved impossible to tally everything he wrote and compiled.

Nor was that the end of it. When he was imprisoned, his followers were scattered (2), his books dispersed, and his associates were intimidated into concealing his writings. Each person kept what he had, hid it, and refused to produce it (3): one would abscond with his portion, another would sell it or give it away (4), a third would stash it in some hiding place. Some even had their copies stolen or had them flatly denied, leaving them unable to demand their return or to retrieve them (5). Under such conditions books and treatises are inevitably rent to pieces (6).

Had Allah—exalted is He—not shown kindness, given aid, bestowed favor, and, in a manner that defied the ordinary course of events (7), preserved the very originals of his writings, no one would ever have been able to assemble them.

Indeed, I myself have witnessed extraordinary happenings in the preservation and collection of his books, the repair of what had decayed, and the recovery of what had been lost—events so astonishing that, were I to relate them, every fair-minded person (8) would realize that Allah