and my Lord—glorified and exalted—enabled me to consult four manuscript copies; so I sought His help in collating, verifying, and presenting them in their present form.

[Authenticating the Title]
It appears—and Allah knows best—that Shaykh al-Islam, may Allah have mercy on him, did not give this treatise a specific name; rather, in his introduction he wrote:

“Numerous Muslims have repeatedly asked me to write a clarification of the rites of ḥajj.”

Nevertheless, in two of the manuscripts—copies (A) and (D)—the work is entitled Manāsik al-Ḥajj (The Rites of Pilgrimage).

[Editorial Method]
1 - In producing this edition I relied on four manuscript copies, which will be described below.
2 - I did not treat any one copy as the base text, for all of them post-date the author; instead, I compared them all and adopted whichever reading seemed closest to the correct one.
3 - I recorded every variant among the selected copies, except for formulas of blessing, mercy, and prayer upon the Prophet, as well as variations in Qur’anic citations—sometimes the whole verse is quoted, at other times only a portion—these I have not signalled.
4 - I have identified the Qur’anic verses and traced the hadiths and historical reports to their sources.