“When my heart hardened and my ways narrowed, I made my hope a ladder to Your forgiveness.”

Al-Muzani visited al-Shafi‘i in his final illness and asked how he was. Al-Shafi‘i said he was leaving this world and parting from his brothers, about to meet his own bad deeds and come before Allah, not knowing whether his soul was bound for Paradise or the Fire — and then recited these lines. Al-Ghazali records the scene in the Ihya’, and al-Bayhaqi in his biography of al-Shafi‘i. The next line: “my sin weighed on me, but when I set it beside Your pardon, my Lord, Your pardon was greater.”