Description of the manuscript:
I have relied on a single copy that forms part of a collected volume (majmūʿ) of the works of Shaykh al-Islām, preserved in the Egyptian National Library (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya) under shelf-mark 444, Fiqh Teymūr.
This copy comprises 75 folios, with 13 lines to each page. It is in the hand of the scribe ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ḥakīm,1 as stated at the end of one of the treatises in the volume. Although penned in a fine ruqʿa script, it contains numerous omissions and mistakes.

Verifying the work’s attribution to the author:
I have not found any of the biographers of Shaykh al-Islām who list this treatise by name. Nevertheless, a reader familiar with his other writings will see that he treats the very same issues at length elsewhere and summarizes them in language that closely matches what appears here.2

As for the title of the work, I have kept it exactly as the author recorded at the beginning: “A Question on Whether Guarding the Frontiers (ribāṭ) Is Superior or Residing as a Neighbor in Mecca—may Allah ennoble her.”