printed in Cairo in 1404 AH, and was reviewed and annotated by Dr. Usamah Muhammad ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm.

3 – Ṣalāt al-Muḥibbīn wa al-Ṭarīq ilā Imāmat al-Muttaqīn (The Prayer of the Lovers and the Path to Leading the God-fearing): under this title it was printed at Safir Press in Riyadh and issued jointly by Dār Saʿd al-Nujaym and Muʾassasat al-Bashāʾir, Riyadh, in 1413 AH (second edition); it was prepared for publication and annotated by Khālid b. ʿAlī al-ʿAnbarī.

Although this treatise has already been published, a new, critically edited printing remains urgently needed for the following reasons:

a) The existing edition was based on a single manuscript—the copy preserved in the Egyptian National Library.

b) That edition was not subjected to rigorous scholarly verification that would reassure the reader of the work’s attribution to its author, yield a text as accurate as possible, and include a thorough collation of the available manuscripts …

c) The printed text tampers with the author’s wording: at times omitting words and sentences without notice, at others adding words without notice, and at still others substituting phrases without notice and without any legitimate reason for alteration.

d) Some words that are erroneous in the manuscript were reproduced unchanged, with no attempt to determine the correct reading.

e) Publishing the work under the title by which it is well known among scholars would better facilitate its circulation and the dissemination of the knowledge it contains.

Second: Description of the manuscript copies
I have examined four manuscript versions, which will be designated as follows: