from Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Naysābūrī, who in turn relates from Ayyūb ibn Sulaymān, from Abū Bakr ibn Abī Uways, from Sulaymān ibn Bilāl, from Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, together with another transmitter, all reporting from Ibn Shihāb. It therefore appears that Ibn al-Muqarrab al-Karkhī actually heard this narration from al-Nasāʾī.
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd informed us—during my recitation—as did Mūsā ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir, Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Faqīh, and a group of others. They said:
“ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar informed us; the two of us then said: ʿAbd al-Awwal ibn ʿĪsā informed us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥammuyah informed us; Ibrāhīm ibn Khuzaym informed us; ʿAbd ibn Ḥumaid narrated to us; Yūnus ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; Shaybān narrated to us, from Qatādah,”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “If there were any evil omen (*shu’m*) in something, it would be found in the house, the woman, and the horse.”
Ahmad, 2/85, and Muslim, no. 117, transmit the narration of Ibn Umar with the wording: “If any evil omen were true, it would be in the horse, the woman, and the house.” A report from Sahl ibn Saʿd appears in Malik, 3/140; Bukhari, 6/45, 48; and Muslim, no. 2226, with the words: “If it exists, then it is in the horse, the woman, and the dwelling,” meaning evil omen.
This last wording shows that evil omen is in fact negated altogether, for its sense is: “Were evil omen ever established in anything, it would be in these three—but it is not established in anything.” It seems that the earlier version, “Evil omen is in the horse…,” is the result of abbreviation or alteration by some transmitters.
ʿAʾisha herself rejected the hadith in that form. Imam Ahmad (6/150, 240, 246) records, through the chain Rawh → Saʿid → Qatadah → Abu Hassan al-Aʿraj, that two men entered upon ʿAʾisha and said, “Abu Hurayrah reports that the Prophet ﷺ used to say, ‘Evil omen is only in the woman, the riding-animal, and the house.’” One part of her response “went up to the sky and another to the earth,” and she declared, “By the One who sent down the Quran upon Abuʾl-Qasim, he did not say that. Rather, the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘The people of the Jahiliyyah used to say that evil omen is in the woman, the riding-animal, and the house.’” She then recited: “No calamity strikes on earth or among yourselves but it is inscribed in a Book before We bring it into being” (Q 57:22).
Ahmad also records the same account (6/150, 240) through two other chains from Hammam → Qatadah; the isnad is sound. Al-Zarkashi, in al-Ijaba, p. 115, quotes some scholars as saying: “The version transmitted by ʿAʾisha is the more correct, God willing, because it accords with the Prophet’s general prohibition of *tiyara* (superstitious omens), his dislike of it, and his encouragement to abandon it in the saying: ‘Seventy thousand of my community will enter Paradise without reckoning—they are those who do not cauterize themselves, do not seek omens, do not request *ruqya*, and rely upon their Lord.’”