The manuscript is written in a clear naskh hand. The first volume contains 263 folios, the second 247, and the fourth 269. Each page has 21 lines.

At the end of the first volume, the copyist explicitly states in red ink: “Collated up to this point against an exemplar read to its author—may Allah sanctify his soul and illuminate his grave.” A similar statement appears at the end of the second volume, and the same occurs in the fourth volume on fols. 29/a, 249/b, and 259/b. The progress annotations, dotted circles, and supplementary insertions throughout the manuscript attest to this collation. All are in black ink, like the main text, except for five supplementary insertions in the first volume, which the copyist wrote in red, as he did the chapter headings, on fols. 9/b, 23/b, 32/b, 37/b, and 42/a. Three of these are very long, extending around three sides of the page. The insertion on fol. 9/b required part of the main text to be crossed out. These are, in fact, additions that the author appended to a copy of his book; hence their absence from other manuscripts, such as (jīm, kāf, ‘ayn). On fols. 16/b and 18/a there are three further insertions which likewise appear to be additions by the author, since several manuscripts lack them, although the copyist wrote them in black. We do not know whether the manuscript’s exemplar lacked these additions and the copyist added them after completing his transcription, when collating it against “the exemplar read to the author,” or whether the manuscript was copied from that exemplar, with the additions already present in its margins, and the copyist followed his exemplar exactly.

The scribe copied the text on fols. 100/b–108 a second time on fols. 109–115. The repeated text is preceded by a blank page, 108/b. There are differences between the two transcriptions; indeed, the second has a blank space at a point where the first has none. Curiously, evidence of collation appears in the margins of both transcriptions!