the blank spaces on p. 111—in three places, one of them almost a full line; on p. 201, about three words; and on p. 792, several entire lines.

2 – A recurrent habit of the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—in his writings is to say, “We have treated this subject at length elsewhere.” This phrase appears many times in the present work, which obliged me to spend considerable effort tracking down the passages to which he was alluding in his other books—except in rare instances.

3 – The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—will sometimes cite a book by an abbreviated title, or refer to it only by its meaning, relying on his prodigious memory. This makes it difficult to locate the work quickly—if it still exists at all—or even to identify it through reference books concerned with the Islamic scholarly heritage. Examples of this occur on p. 323, p. 325, p. 334, p. 436, and elsewhere.

4 – He also quotes from manuscript works, some of which extend over several volumes. Anyone who has trodden this path knows how challenging it is to track down certain citations from manuscripts, whether the manuscript is available only as a photographic copy or has not yet been serviced with proper indices. Among the manuscripts I consulted during the verification—and from which the author, may Allah have mercy on him, quoted—are:
• Nihayat al-ʿUqul fi Dirayat al-Usul, by Fakhr al-Razi.
• al-Sunnah: al-Musnad min Masāʾil Abi ʿAbdillah Ahmad ibn Hanbal, as transmitted by Abu Bakr al-Khallal.
• Dhamm al-Kalam, by Abu Ismaʿil al-Harawi.
• Ibtal al-Taʾwilat li-Akhbar al-Sifat, by Qadi Abu Yaʿla.
• al-Asna: Sharh Asmaʾ Allah al-Husna wa Sifatihi al-ʿUla, by Abu ʿAbdillah al-Qurtubi.

5 – The book’s great length and the difficulty of its subject matter. I do not exaggerate when I say that I spend long hours simply trying to understand some of its passages.