to prepare a critical edition and to trace its chains of transmission; I then added, “and to abridge it, removing the unsound reports.” I made clear to him how necessary and important that was.
After further discussion and close consideration, we agreed. What encouraged me to proceed was my knowledge of a sound manuscript preserved in the Ẓāhiriyyah Library in Damascus on which we could rely for the verification.
I began the abridgment while traveling, using a poorly printed and poorly edited copy, for at the time no other was available to us. When I returned to Damascus I devoted myself to the task—collating, sourcing, and annotating—until Allah, by His grace, favor, and generosity, enabled its completion.
As soon as I started the critical work I collated the printed copy just mentioned with the library manuscript, and I drew on whatever other printed editions I possessed. The most important of these was the first edition, a lithograph printed in India in 1306 AH. That edition was based on a manuscript copied from another manuscript penned in the author’s own hand—may Allah have mercy on him—by Aḥmad ibn Zayd al-Maqdisī, as stated at the end of the Indian copy.
The other editions follow the Indian text and are derived from it; they are three:
- The Manār edition produced by Sayyid Rashīd Riḍā—may Allah have mercy on him—printed in 1332 AH; its base text is the Indian edition, as he states on the first page of his print.
- The edition of Anṣār al-Sunnah al-Muḥammadiyyah, Cairo, printed in 1357 AH, with notes by our esteemed brother Shaykh ʿAbd al-Razzāq ʿAfīfī and proofreading by Ustadh Zakariyyā ʿAlī Yūsuf.
- The edition issued by the Salafiyyah Library, Madinah, 1388 AH, with an introduction and proofreading by Ustadh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ʿUthmān.