Description of the Manuscripts
At the outset of this project we had access to the following copies:
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A photographic reproduction of the manuscript preserved in the Ahmad III Library in Istanbul under number (2910). It comprises fourteen volumes, of which the final volume is missing.
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A photographic reproduction of the second Ahmad III manuscript, seven volumes of which are extant.
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Two volumes photographed from the Imām Laknawī Library in India.
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Two photographed volumes owned by the Arab Scientific Academy in Damascus.
Among these, our principal reliance has been on the photographic copy of the manuscript kept in the Ahmad III Library in Istanbul, no. (2910). This is a precious codex, penned in a handsome naskh script during the author’s lifetime from the exemplar written in his own hand, and subsequently collated against it. The scribe—Faraj ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṭughān, who copied it for himself—has left us no biographical entry that would reveal his scholarly rank. Nevertheless, the exceptional accuracy, meticulous execution, and rarity of error in this manuscript, coupled with its being compared to the author’s original, all testify that he was a man of knowledge, precision, and skill.
He finished copying the third volume—the work’s opening volume—on the night of Friday, the first of the blessed month of Shaʿbān in the year 739 AH, and completed the thirteenth volume in 743 AH, as noted on its final folio.