26 – “I seek Your pardon and turn to You in repentance”: I beg You to forgive me and to grant me true repentance.

27 – The compiler states: “And in one narration it is said that this takes place in the night prayer.” The hadith scholar Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Mubarakfuri remarks in Tuhfat al-Ahwadhi: “This assertion is open to question, for although the hadith is recorded in Sahih Muslim in the chapter on night prayer, one of its wordings explicitly reads, ‘When he rose for the obligatory prayer.’ The same appears in both of Abu Dawud’s transmissions. In al-Daraqutni’s version we find: ‘When he began the obligatory prayer he would say: I have turned my face …’ and so forth.
“Al-Shawkani, in Nayl al-Awtar, adds: Ibn Hibban likewise transmitted it and included the phrase, ‘When he rose for the obligatory prayer’; and for that reason al-Shafiʿi narrated it, restricting it as well to the obligatory prayer. Therefore, to claim that this supplication is limited to voluntary prayers and is not legislated for the obligatory ones is utterly groundless.” End of quotation.