This is a very carefully executed copy, but termites have damaged it, leaving some words at the tops and bottoms of certain pages illegible. In several places, it alone preserves words that are correct in their context and also occur in the source from which the passage was taken (al-Hamawī’s book), though there appears to be a cancellation line above them. I do not know who drew it, or why those words were not copied into the other manuscripts. Did the copyists regard them as cancelled, or did someone collate this manuscript against another copy, find the words absent there, and strike them out?

There is a lacuna of two leaves after plate 204. The omission is noted in the margin.

The scribe’s practice when writing the blessing and salutation upon the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is to abbreviate it to “sallā Allāh ‘lm.” Sometimes he writes only “slm,” as in the entries for “watermelon” and “raisins” in the section on Prophetic medicine.

This manuscript may be the exemplar from which some other copies were transcribed, and there are indications supporting this possibility. For example, the word al-dhā’idīn is written in it with the alif touching—or nearly touching—the dhāl, giving the word a form that someone who did not examine it closely might read as al-bā’idīn. The latter reading also occurs in the al-Musallā manuscript (ص), and subsequently, through that copy, in the al-Zāhiriyya manuscript (د).

Likewise, the word sahmī is written in a form resembling sahmayn. It was misread as the latter in the al-Musallā manuscript (ص), and subsequently, through that copy, in the al-Zāhiriyya manuscript (د).

In one passage, the scribe first wrote “the Helpers and the Emigrants,” then placed a small mīm (“m”) above each of the two words to indicate a slip of the pen: the first should come second and the second first, giving “the Emigrants and the Helpers.” Apparently, some who copied from this manuscript failed to notice this and retained the wording as it stood, as is the case in the manuscript