Verifying Its Attribution to the Author:
The book’s ascription to Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī is firmly established, and the proofs are many:
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Every manuscript copy attributes the work to the ḥadith-master Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, whether on the title page or in the introductory colophon. The sole exception is the Jerusalem copy (Q), where one reader or owner erred, assigning the book to Sīdī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Maqdisī and giving it a title at variance with all the other copies and with the sources that mention the work (1).
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On the verso of one manuscript al-Mizzī (d. 742 AH)—the close companion of Shaykh al-Islam whose life the book recounts, and the teacher of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, its author—wrote a note naming the book, identifying its author, and praying that Allah perpetuate the benefit of his insights (2). This single testimony would by itself suffice to confirm the attribution.
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Biographers of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī list this treatise among his writings; consult the sources for his biography.
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Likewise, everyone who has cited the book assigns it to Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, as in al-Radd al-Wāfir (pp. 64, 109, 230), and so do those who produced abridgements of it, such as Shaykh Marʿī