The Distinguishing Feature of This Edition

This edition is distinguished from its predecessors by being the only complete edition of the book. By His grace, Allah facilitated access to manuscript no. 1553 in the Shahīd Ali Library in Turkey. It contains many additions absent from most manuscripts of the book. These additions amount to approximately thirty pages, occurring at various places throughout the work.

We have identified all these additions in the book’s marginal notes. They vary in length: some consist of one or more words, others of one or more lines, still others of one or more pages, while some comprise an entire chapter spanning several pages.

We shall discuss these additions from two perspectives:

The first: Establishing that these additions are the Shaykh’s own work.

This is demonstrated by several considerations:

1. The copyist of the base manuscript states that he copied it from a manuscript, most of which had been transcribed from a copy made from the handwriting of its author, Shaykh al-Islām.

2. These additions contain revisions to the wording, expansions of discussions and issues, and scholarly positions that establish conclusively that they came from the author of the book. They are not additions made by other readers, annotators, or anyone else.

3. These additions correspond with the contents of the Shaykh’s other works in style, views, and scholarly positions.

4. These additions accord with the flow and context of the book’s text and do not depart from it.