Under that very title the book was issued in Cairo in 1423 AH, edited by Dr. Muḥammad al-Sayyid al-Jalind. In the introduction to his edition (p. 39) he contends that this is the book’s correct name and even lists it among the unique features of the manuscript—indeed, of his own publication!
The esteemed editor, however, failed to notice that the heading is written in a hand different from that of the main text; it must, therefore, belong to a later reader or to someone who once owned the codex. Its authority is further weakened by the fact that the person who penned the title also erred in the author’s name—just as he erred in the title itself—attributing the work to “Sayyidī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Maqdisī.” None of the scholars who mention or quote from the book record this solitary title, nor does it appear in any of the many extant manuscripts. All that can reasonably be said, then, is that the heading is merely one of several that surfaced on a single copy of the work, carries no special weight over the other titles, and is nothing more than the invention of the individual who wrote it.
- Kitāb Mukhtaṣar fī Dhikr Ḥāl al-Shaykh al-Imām al-ʿAllāmah Shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Abī al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Ibn Taymiyyah al-Ḥarrānī wa-Dhikr Baʿḍ Manāqibihi wa-Muṣannafātihi (An Abridged Book on the Life of the eminent scholar, Shaykh al-Islam Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Ibn Taymiyyah of Ḥarrān, together with mention of some of his virtues and works).
This designation appears on the cover page of the archetype—the Köprülü manuscript—as well as on copy (B). The archetype is the oldest surviving witness to the work, having been written in 758 AH, only fourteen years after the author’s death. Its scribe explicitly states that he copied the heading from the handwriting of the ḥadith master Imām Jamāl al-Dīn al-Mizzī (d. 742 AH). The ḥadith scholar Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī likewise saw this same heading in al-Mizzī’s own hand and reproduced it in his book al-Radd al-Wāfir (p. 230).
After writing the heading, al-Mizzī appended the name of its compiler, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī.