The copyist divided the manuscript into fascicles of ten folios each, noting this in the left-hand corner of every leaf. In this way he produced seventeen fascicles, not counting the letters that were later appended to the book and mentioned above.
This copy is regarded as the most important and the earliest of all extant manuscripts of the work. It is sound, its mistakes are few, and it bears numerous signs of correction and collation, which shows that it was compared with its exemplar. The scribe entered a collation note every ten folios from the beginning of the book to its end; see (ق 19ب, 29ب, 39ب, 49 and so on). One such note, on (ق 190ب), states: “Collation completed to the extent possible; written day and night.”
In the overall sequence of topics this manuscript agrees with the other copies, yet it includes several additions unique to it, such as Shaykh al-Islām’s letter to his maternal brother, Badr al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim. At the same time it differs markedly from copies (ف، ح، ك، د) in the number of elegiac poems, their arrangement, and the count of their verses.
- The Jerusalem copy (ق):
A copy preserved in the library of Shaykh Khalīl al-Khālidī in Jerusalem, catalogue number 42/429. It comprises 142 folios—according to my own pagination—with thirteen lines per folio and only seven to nine words per line. A microfilm is kept at the Institute of Arabic Manuscripts under number (913). Judging by the hand, it appears to be a ninth-century-AH transcript. The final folio (ق 142) has been completed in a different hand.
On its title page is written: “The Book of Victory in Describing the Circumstances of the Vanquisher of Innovators and the Last of the Independent Jurists, Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah envelop him in His mercy.”