Ibn Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Tammār, known as Ibn Dāsah — may God have mercy on them and be pleased with them all.

The title page contained several audition certificates (samāʿāt), one of them in the handwriting of the Imām, the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sulaymān ibn Ḥawṭ Allāh.

This copy is according to the transmission (riwāyah) of Ibn Dāsah from Abū Dāwūd, and upon this transmission Abū Sulaymān al-Khaṭṭābī — who died in the year 375 AH — based his commentary, for he transmits it directly from Ibn Dāsah. However, we found that it differed on some occasions from al-Khaṭṭābī's transmission, and perhaps that is due to differences among the transmissions from Ibn Dāsah — and God knows best.

On the leaf preceding the title page, the following text appears:

I read this book — namely, the Sunan compiled by Abū Dāwūd — before the Imām, the venerable master Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Tanūkhī, while he held his own copy in his hand, reading and annotating it himself. He collated his copy against that of his colleague, the jurist Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Qaysī, who had previously compared it against two ancient copies that had belonged to al-Ḥakam al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh, Commander of the Faithful — may God be pleased with him — which Abū Bakr ibn Dāsah — may God have mercy on him — had sent to him, containing his own handwriting. Then Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ghassānī — may God have mercy on him — undertook its collation against the book of Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm, being his transmission from Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Aʿrābī, from the beginning of the collection to its end. He wrote most of the annotations of the aforementioned book in his own hand, and marked them in this book with the letter (ʿ) as a sign. And what he wrote —