the Shāfiʿī judge in 746 AH; hence, anyone who claims that this work is an abridgement must first establish the date on which the supposed larger book was written and the reason it was later condensed.

d) His method and the breadth of his rebuttal—especially his demonstration of the weakness of the ḥadīth concerning the muhallil—are in no way characteristic of a summary.

e) When he says that the book is confined to its specific subject and that it is an abridgement on horsemanship, he merely means that he did not attempt to collect every ḥadīth and report on the matter, but was satisfied with a selection of them. This is probably what led the scribe of the autograph copy (ẓ) to fault the author for omitting some well-known narrations.

4 – The scholars have unanimously affirmed that he authored a work entitled “al-Furūsiyyah al-Muḥammadiyyah,” without ever referring to any larger or smaller version. Among those scholars are his contemporary al-Ṣafadī, and later authorities such as Ibn al-Nuhhās, al-Sakhāwī, and al-Saffārīnī, as well as what is written on the covers of all the extant manuscripts (the Ẓāhiriyyah, Iraqi, and Ḥāʾil copies). (1)

5 – Everything cited by Ibn al-Nuhhās, al-Sakhāwī, and al-Saffārīnī is found in this very book, as will be shown.

6 – Up to the present, no manuscript has been discovered under the title “al-Furūsiyyah al-Sharʿiyyah” that could serve as an original for this work.

7 – When Ibn Kathīr mentioned the trial that befell the author during the events of the year