Accordingly, this copy has been adopted as the principal basis for the critical edition for the following reasons:
(a) it is free from the lacunae that affect all the other copies;
(b) the number of errors it contains is smaller than in the others.

2 – Copy (B)
This manuscript is kept in the Maḥmūdiyyah Library, King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Library, al-Madinah al-Nabawiyyah, under number (2797) Majāmiʿ, entitled: “A Letter Sent by Ibn al-Qayyim to One of His Brothers.”
It consists of fifteen folios, written in a clear, elegant hand. The script and the paper suggest that it dates, approximately, to the twelfth century AH. The copyist is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mūsā. The written area measures 13 × 8.5 cm, with fourteen lines per page.

A gap appears in its middle equivalent to thirty-two printed lines, and the copyist states that this omission was already present in the exemplar from which he worked.

The manuscript occurs a second time in the composite volume in which it is bound, which contains two treatises; the other treatise bears no author’s name.

This copy introduces the work with the words: “This is a book sent by the shaykh, the imām, the scholar, the erudite authority, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, known—”