= Known as Ibn al-Jawzi, the leading scholar of his time, imam of his age, and author of numerous enduring works across various branches of knowledge. Al-Dhahabi remarks: “I have never known a scholar who composed as extensively as this man.” Among his writings is Minhaj al-Qāṣidīn (The Path of the Aspiring, 2 vols.), which, as Ḥājjī Khalīfa notes, follows the style of al-Ghazālī’s al-Iḥyā’ but omits weak ḥadīth and baseless Sufi doctrines. Ibn al-Jawzi died in 597 AH. See: al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-Huffāẓ, vol. 4, pp. 1342–1348; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, vol. 13, pp. 27–29; Ibn Rajab, al-Dhail ’alā Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila, vol. 1, pp. 399–403; Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-Ẓunūn, vol. 2, p. 1878. (1) In the original the passage between the brackets is blank—about fourteen lines in the main manuscript, about eight lines in manuscript S, and reduced to a single word in edition T—on which a marginal note reads: “This is the blank in the originals at our disposal, amounting to about seven lines, and it appears to be correct.” This raises a question, since the text implies that the speaker is Ibn al-Jawzi himself. It is possible that the missing portion is supplied by Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī’s abridgment of Minhaj al-Qāṣidīn (p. 21): Ibn Qudāma explains in his introduction that he did not rigidly follow the original arrangement or the exact wording but paraphrased for brevity, and sometimes incorporated a ḥadīth or brief passage from another source when appropriate. See the introduction to the same work, p. 12. (2) The text between the brackets is an addition found in manuscripts S and T. In the original it reads “Abū ’Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ’Abd Allāh ibn Saʿīd,” which is an error. His biography was given above (p. 169).