“Every steed has its stumble.”

A classical Arabic proverb from the vocabulary of horsemanship: even the best horse stumbles. Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih gives it in a set — every thoroughbred stumbles, every sharp sword misses, every scholar slips. Abu Hilal al-‘Askari heard that Ibn al-Qirriyyah said it first and could not confirm it; the story he tells has him before al-Hajjaj, the executioner’s mat already called for, asking leave to say a few words that would outlive him as a proverb, and beginning with this one. It belongs with the hadith that every child of Adam errs.