and it loathes being overpowered, so it seeks retaliation; only the prophets and the supremely truthful endure this sort of trial.
From that point onward, the author—may Allah have mercy on him—confines his discussion to the causes that help a servant remain patient when calamities come to him through other people’s actions, and he enumerates those causes in twenty points.
He then closes by touching on the second principle, gratitude, which he defines as acting in obedience to Allah. Beyond that brief remark, the treatise contains no further detail on gratitude. The likely explanation is that someone extracted this treatise as an independent piece and separated it from the remainder of the larger work; otherwise, the composition has a continuation. Supporting evidence is Ibn Rushayq’s listing of Ibn Taymiyyah’s writings, in which he says: “A Principle on Patience and Gratitude, about sixty folios.” The abridger altered the title and likewise limited himself to what was written on patience alone, leaving the rest of the treatise unfinished—Allah knows best.
This may also explain why the work lacks a formal conclusion; instead, the final line simply reads: “Completed with Allah’s praise and assistance.”
B. Description of the Manuscripts
For the critical edition of this treatise I relied on two manuscript copies.
- The first copy: the Oxford University manuscript. It forms part of a composite volume that also includes Ibn Taymiyyah’s Kitab al-ʿUbudiyyah, and a microfilm of it is kept in the Manuscripts Section of the Library Affairs Deanship at the Islamic University of Madinah under number (F 8570/5).
• Total folios: 4.
• Lines per page: between twenty and twenty-one lines.