This study critically addresses the debates on the originality of the history of Islamic philosophy, which has frequently been exposed to orientalist discourse and, in connection with this, to a language of denigration and suspicion. Moreover, it argues that the proper scholarly method to refute these claims is to conduct a direct and combined analysis of primary and secondary sources. Within Islamic thought, commentary (sharḥ) and gloss (ḥāshiya) texts constitute one of the most important aspects of the manuscript tradition. They represent not only a commentary tradition, but also serve as an epistemic body of evidence showing how philosophical ideas circulated across different locales, including Khurāsān, Cairo, Damascus, al-Andalus, Baghdad, Samarqand, Najaf, Istanbul, Erzurum, and Kastamonu, were reproduced in new contexts, and consolidated in various intellectual settings. In this context, Avicenna’s Qaṣīdat al-ʿAyniyya (which appears in some manuscript copies under titles such as Qaṣīdat al-Rūḥ, Qaṣīdat al-Waraqiyya, Qaṣīdat al-Nafsiyya, or Rūḥāniyya) has been taken as an exemplary text in terms of both its content and its position within the commentary-gloss tradition. In this study, the existing manuscripts of the Qaṣīdat al-ʿAyniyya have been identified through different library catalogues. For each manuscript, bibliographic details, author or copyist attributions (nisba), dates of transcription (istinsākh), and the opening lines (incipit) have been compared and determined. In this way, the temporal and geographical circulation of the text has been systematically traced and demonstrated. The methodology of the research is based on a systematic literature analysis approach in order to show the role of the commentary and gloss tradition in ensuring intellectual continuity. This approach examines primary manuscript sources both in terms of their content and from a textual criticism perspective, while also comprehensively evaluating the debates in modern secondary literature. As a result, answers have been provided to questions regarding how the Qaṣīdat al-ʿAyniyya found its place within the commentary and gloss tradition, in which regions these manuscripts were copied (istinsākh), and by whom they were commented on and annotated. Against the accusations concerning the lack of originality in Islamic philosophy, a strong academic foundation has thus been established by allowing these texts to ‘speak for themselves’. In this way, the intellectual trajectories sustained by these texts over centuries and how these trajectories provided continuity within the philosophical sphere have been clearly revealed.