The text and its sources

The manuscripts

The principal manuscript

The principal manuscript witness is a complete copy of the treatise, reproduced in facsimile across fifty-four pages, whose colophon is dated 1350 AH — about 1931 CE. The editors of the Persian facsimile edition identify it as being in ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī's own hand, and they used it as the base copy for their edition.

That identification is theirs. Tabsirah reports it rather than repeating it as its own finding: no independent examination of the handwriting has been made for this edition, and none is claimed. What this edition does rely on is the text the manuscript carries, which it treats as the primary authority wherever a reading is in question.

The Gīlānī manuscript

A second manuscript witness exists in the hand of Muḥammadī Gīlānī. Only three sample pages of it are available in the material this edition holds, so it stands as a subsidiary witness and not as a second base copy. Where those pages bear on a reading, the notes say so.

The printed witnesses

Three printed witnesses are used alongside the manuscripts.

the Balāgh edition

The standalone edition of the treatise published by Muʾassasat al-Balāgh, Beirut (Dār Salūnī), edited by Maḥmūd al-Shāmī al-ʿĀmilī, 1425 AH / 2005 CE. This edition's Arabic reading text was first established from it.

the Rasāʾil Sabʿa printing

Rasāʾil Sabʿa (رسائل سبعة), the collection of seven treatises in which al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt appears from page 165. Consulted where a reading is in question.

the Rabīʿī edition

Majmūʿat Rasāʾil al-ʿAllāmah al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, edited by Shaykh Ṣabāḥ al-Rabīʿī (Baqiyāt / Maktabat Fadak, Qum, first edition, 1428 AH / 2007 CE), where the treatise runs from page 379 to page 427. Consulted where a reading is in question. Al-Rabīʿī's own annotations are an editor's voice, not the author's, and are never cited here as the author's words.

How the Arabic was established

The reading text was first established from the Balāgh edition, page by page. It was then checked against the manuscript facsimile, and corrected against it wherever the two differed on a reading that mattered. The Rasāʾil Sabʿa printing and the Rabīʿī edition were consulted selectively, at the places where a reading was in question rather than across the whole treatise.

That is worth stating plainly, because it is not the same thing as a fresh transcription of the manuscript. The manuscript is the authority this edition defers to when witnesses disagree; it is not the copy from which the text was typed.

Nothing is emended silently. Where a witness is followed against another, the passage carries a textual note. Where the manuscript cannot be read with confidence at a particular place, the edition says so rather than choosing quietly.

The apparatus

Translation note

Explains why a particular expression is rendered as it is in English.

Textual note

Explains a meaningful difference between manuscript or printed readings, and why this edition follows one reading rather than another.

Source qualification

States a limit or uncertainty in the source evidence.

Citation or provenance note

Identifies the source or evidence on which a statement rests.

Editorial decision note

Records a choice made by this edition that is not simply a reading taken from a witness.

Notes lead with the point a reader needs. Where a textual note has more evidence worth seeing—the exact Arabic forms, witness readings, and page references—it appears under Witness details, so the explanation comes before the full apparatus.

Works the treatise cites

The treatise refers readers to al-Iʿtibārāt, Ṭabāṭabāʾī's treatise on posited notions—the conceptions and judgments the mind adopts for the sake of acting.