He means: I seek forgiveness from God for a sin, just as He, Exalted be His Praise, said: {And seek forgiveness for your sin} [Sūrat Ghāfir: 55] (55).
And among it is the saying of Nābigha of Banū Dhubyān:
So he hunts us the wild ass confident in its galloping,
Before fatigue, and the barking horned beast. (1)
He means: he hunts for us. And that is abundant in their poetry and speech, and in what we have mentioned of it there is sufficiency.
The discourse concerning the interpretation of His statement: ﴿the straight path﴾.
Abū Jaʿfar said: The entire Ummah among the people of interpretation has reached consensus that "the straight path" is the clear road in which there is no crookedness. Likewise is it in the language of all the Arabs. Among that is the saying of Jarīr ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Khaṭafī:
The Commander of the Faithful is upon a path
That is straight when the watering places become crooked. (2)
He means: upon the path of truth. And among it is the saying of the Hudhalī, Abū Dhuʾayb:
We attacked their land with horses in the morning until
We left it finer than the path. (3)
Notes
- (1) The verse is not in his Dīwān. From the poem, there are verses in it: 23 (Muḥammad Jamāl edition), and al-Mujtanā by Ibn Durayd: 23, describing a horse. Al-ʿayr: wild donkey. Al-ḥaḍar: intense running, and the wild donkey runs intensely. Al-wanā: fatigue and weakness in running or work. Al-ashʿab: the gazelle whose horns spread apart, branching out and separating significantly. Barking (nabḥ) of the dog, gazelle, and he-goat: he barks a bark (nibāḥ), so he is a barker (nabbāḥ), when his cries become frequent out of joy and vigor. When the gazelle ages and branches grow on its horns, it barks (al-Ḥayawān 1:349). He describes his horse as running intensely, overtaking the wild donkey proud of its run and the strong, fast gazelle, hunting them before fatigue reaches it.
- (2) His Dīwān: 507, praising Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik. Al-mawārid is the plural of mawrid: the paths to water. He means the paths that people take toward their objectives and needs, just as they take paths to water.
- (3) It is not in his Dīwān, and al-Qurṭubī attributed it in his Tafsīr 1:128 to ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṭufayl, but it is not in his Dīwān. If it is Hudhalī, it may be from the poetry of al-Mutanakhkhil, who has a poem in Dīwān al-Hudhaliyyīn 2:18–28 in this rhyme. And ʿAmr ibn Maʿdīkarib has similar verses narrated by al-Qālī in al-Nawādir 3:191.
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