Description of the Manuscript Copies

This book has been critically edited on the basis of five handwritten manuscripts. Two of them are early: one was copied in 715 AH, thirteen years before the author’s death, and the other in 781 AH, after his passing. The remaining three are later copies, whose details I shall set out, God willing. I have assigned a siglum to each manuscript and cite it in the footnotes as follows:

A, B, C, D, and Ṭ.

In addition, I consulted the printed edition released by Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī—may Allah have mercy on him. Because I detected numerous differences between that edition and the manuscripts available to me, I concluded that it was based on a manuscript that I have not yet obtained; therefore, I have treated it as a sixth witness.

1. First manuscript (siglum A): I found this copy among the Chester Beatty holdings purchased by Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University. It is now kept in the University’s central library in Riyadh under number 4160 (1). This is an old copy, dated thirteen years before the author’s death—specifically, 715 AH, as stated at the end of the codex. The scribe is Hilāl ibn ʿAlī ibn Hilāl ibn Zāmil al-Jaʿfarī, and he remarks at the conclusion that he compared it against the author’s original.