These two later editions are, in fact, nothing more than re-prints of Sayyid Rashīd Riḍā’s Manār edition. Although neither of them admits this, anyone who collates the three will see it plainly: every omission, slip, or textual corruption found in the Manār text inevitably surfaces in the other two. Examples abound, but I shall make do with a single—quite remarkable—instance, one that shows the true value of the “critical editing” some people trumpet.

I drew attention to the point at the end of the book under entry 167, “al-Shaykh Abū al-Bayān.” In the Manār printing (p. 342) the passage reads:

“… al-Hanābilah idhā qīla lahum mā al-dalīl ʿalā anna al-Qurʾān ‘laysa’ bi-ḥarf wa-ṣawt?”
(“… the Ḥanbalīs, when asked, ‘What proof is there that the Qur’an is not made up of letters and sound?’ ”)

The word laysa (“not”) has been inserted in parentheses and set in a smaller font, signalling—by the proof-reader, presumably someone other than Sayyid Rashīd—that it is a personal conjecture added to the base text, namely the Indian edition. As I pointed out there, the manuscript is completely free of the word.

A new “exercise of judgment” then occurred in the Anṣār edition: its proof-reader removed the parentheses, letting laysa slip into the main text and doubling the error. Besides having no basis in the original—something Sayyid Rashīd himself had indicated—the addition wrecks the meaning, for the Ḥanbalīs believe that the Qur’an is indeed composed of letters and sound, as I explained there; that is the truth, contrary to the Ashʿarīs and others.

The same meaning-spoiling addition appears, exactly as above, in the Salafiyyah edition published in Madinah. Let the perceptive reader judge how much weight should be given to the proud claim printed beneath that edition’s title:

“Introduced and collated with the original sources by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ….”