In another account he said, “Allah forgave me on account of some verses I had composed and placed beneath my pillow.” They came and found them on a scrap written in his own hand:

O Lord, if my sins have grown immense in number,
I know full well that Your pardon is greater.

The complete poem has already been quoted above (1).

Ibn ʿAsākir narrates a further report (2): One of them said, “I saw him in a dream, in pleasing form and in great bounty. I asked, ‘What did Allah do with you?’ He replied, ‘He forgave me.’ I said, ‘On what grounds, seeing that you had been so mixed in your conduct?’ He answered, ‘One night a righteous man came to the graveyard, spread out his cloak and prayed two rakʿahs, reciting in them Surah al-Ikhlāṣ—“Qul Huwa Allahu Aḥad”—two thousand times. He then dedicated the reward to the inhabitants of that cemetery; I was included among them, and Allah forgave me.’ ”

Ibn Khallikān states (3) that the first verses Abu Nuwās ever composed—after keeping company with Abū Usāmah Wālibah ibn al-Ḥabbāb—were these:

The bearer of passion is weary,
Rapture sweeps him away.
If he should weep, his tears are his right—
His state is no idle play.
You laugh in heedless delight,
While the lover can only sob;
You marvel at how sick I am—
My being well would be the marvel indeed. (4)

Al-Maʾmūn once remarked, “How excellent are his words:

Mankind is naught but one doomed, or the son of the doomed—
Even the man of lineage is deeply rooted among the doomed.
When a discerning soul puts this world to the test,
It lays bare an enemy wrapped in a friend’s attire.” (5)

Ibn Khallikān also says (6), “Note how intense his hope in his Lord was when he said:

Accumulate, if you can, a multitude of sins,
For you shall meet a Lord All-Forgiving.
You will see, when you come before Him pardoned,
A Sovereign, mighty and great.
Then you will bite your hands in regret
For the caution you once showed, fearing the blazing fire.” (7)