at Saryāqūs. He was born and studied at this khānqāh, and later served there as deputy shaykh, as al-Sakhāwī mentions in his biography. This khānqāh lies north of Cairo, in a place called Saryāqūs. It was founded by al-Malik al-Nāsir Muhammad ibn Qalāwūn and was therefore named after him.
As for when he copied the manuscript, it may have been towards the end of his life. Al-Sakhāwī mentions that, in his later years, he regularly secluded himself to read, write, and study; perhaps he copied it during that seclusion.
It is not, however, entirely in his hand: the first (24) folios of the first volume are in a different hand, while the last (37) folios of the second volume are in yet another hand.
It agrees very closely with manuscript (mīm) and may have been copied from it, although it contains some omissions, misreadings, and textual corruptions. There is a substantial omission at one point (3/ 262–267 of our edition), perhaps because a folio had fallen out of the exemplar from which it was copied.
Its final page contains five couplets praising the book, without naming their author. They are by Muhammad ibn Ismā‘īl ibn Bardis al-Hanbalī and have already been mentioned in the description of the Bayezid manuscript (zāy).
- The Egyptian National Library manuscript (mīm-bā’)
This manuscript, held in the Egyptian National Library under shelfmark (234 Hadith), contains the first part of the book. It begins at the beginning of the work but is incomplete at the end, concluding with the words: “and that Zaynab, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), asked me to grant them protection” (3/ 334). We have therefore been unable to establish its copying date or the copyist’s name. In our estimation, it was copied in the ninth century AH.