—either, from scribal corruption and omissions. The copyist left half of the recto of folio 95 blank, adding the note, “I think this is intentionally left blank.” He then left the entire verso empty and repeated, “I think this is intentionally left blank.”

The manuscript contains numerous marginal notes—some explaining rare words, others merely providing headings for certain passages. Because they add little of value, I have not cited them in the annotations. I have designated this manuscript by the siglum “B.”

From what has been said, it becomes clear that the Aleppo manuscript is the more complete of the two, for it alone preserves roughly two-thirds of the text now extant; regrettably, however, it is rife with copyists’ errors. The Berlin copy, by contrast, is the more reliable: in many places it fills gaps left by the Aleppo manuscript and even contains entire chapters missing from it, though it too is not free from corruption and lacunae. For that reason I consulted the manuscripts of the Mukhtaṣar al-Ṣawāʿiq, selected the most dependable among them, and used it as a supplementary witness when establishing the text. It may be described as follows:

Description of the Mukhtaṣar al-Ṣawāʿiq manuscript:
A copy preserved in the Dār al-ʿUlūm Library of Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ in Lucknow, India. It consists of 260 folios, each ruled for 23 lines, with an average of fifteen words per line.

Its title reads: “Abridgment of the Book al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Mursalah ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah wa’l-Muʿaṭṭilah, composed by the erudite, eminent Imām, Mufti of the Muslims, Shaykh Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, son of the learned Imām Abū Bakr, known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah—may Allah sanctify his soul and illumine his grave.”