the support you ascribed to him in defense of the position you preferred! Grant, for the sake of argument, that the view were in fact sound; your attempt to bolster it with that line of reasoning has only weakened it. May Allah forgive us and you, and with Allah, the Exalted, is all success.

We have already remarked—may Allah have mercy on you—that you appended to al-Ṭabarī’s work on archery whatever questions you could collect from the jurists concerning rulings that affect archers. Shortly thereafter you turned to the methods of teaching archery and to a description of bows and their various attributes—subjects foreign to the discipline itself. To Allah belong the final issues of all matters.

If what pertains to horsemanship were set out fairly on its own, it would be confined to no more than forty headings, and anyone who looks into the matter even once will find this plain. By Allah’s grace and aid we rely on Him.

16 – He states on page 473:

“I say: Someone who surveys the chapters in the middle of this book may notice what I have recorded there; yet my sole intention was unqualified good. Allah, exalted is He, says, ‘Say: “I ask of you no payment for it, nor am I one of those who pretend.”’ (Sad 38:86). The author—may Allah ennoble him—strove to the extent of his knowledge and sought nothing but good, and it is established that if a mujtahid reaches the correct conclusion he earns two rewards, while if he errs he still earns one. We ask Allah, exalted is He, to grant good to us and to him. Perhaps a reader who comes upon this composition by the Imām, considers its arrangement, and notes what he omitted—matters that ought not to have been omitted,(1) as we pointed out both in the index that we placed at the beginning of the book and again within several of its chapters—will realise that he intended nothing but good. This, then, is the measure…"