Title of the Work
The author—may Allah have mercy on him—states the title of his book explicitly, and that same designation is found in the great majority of the extant manuscripts. It is likewise what appears in most certificates of audition, copyists’ colophons, commentaries, biographical dictionaries, bibliographic indexes, and other sources through which a book’s title is verified. For that reason I have adopted it: “Nukhbat al-Fikar fī Muṣṭalaḥ Ahl al-Athar” (The Pick of Reflections on the Technical Terminology of the People of Ḥadith).

The author, may Allah have mercy on him, also cites the title in the introduction to his commentary, “Nuzhat al-Naẓar fī Tawḍīḥ Nukhbat al-Fikar” (A Promenade of Insight in Clarifying ‘Nukhbat al-Fikar’), where he says: “Some of my brethren asked me to summarize for him the essential points; so I condensed them into a few concise pages, which I entitled: ‘Nukhbat al-Fikar fī Muṣṭalaḥ Ahl al-Athar.’” (1)