they contained a useful addition, in which case I included it and noted it in the margin. I did not indicate minor variants that had no effect, such as an invocation of blessings upon the Prophet appearing in one witness, an invocation that Allah be pleased with a Companion, or the like.

2. I provided references for the Quranic verses and placed them in the body of the book within square brackets so as not to overload the footnotes. I likewise traced the hadiths to their sources, limiting my citations to the two Sahih collections when a hadith appears in them. If it appears in other collections, I mention the most prominent imams who recorded it. Whenever I find comments on a hadith by one of them, I include them and may support them with statements by later scholars; otherwise, I refer to the assessments of later scholars.

3. I explained obscure words, clarified what was meant by technical terms, and added vowel markings wherever needed.

4. From Shaykh al-Sa‘dī’s other works, I cited those of his preferred legal opinions that I considered important for the reader—whether they added to what appears in this book, confirmed it, or differed from the opinion the Shaykh adopted here. The most important of his works upon which I relied in citing his views and preferred opinions are:

a. Al-Mukhtārāt al-Jaliyya fī al-Masā’il al-Fiqhiyya (Lucid Selections on Jurisprudential Questions), which contains the Shaykh’s corrections of the weaker positions found in al-Rawd al-Murbi, the Hanbali legal manual most widely used among students.