988 – Ziyad al-Sahmi reported: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade hiring a foolish woman as a wet-nurse.” Abu Dawud recorded it; it is mursal, for Ziyad was not a Companion. (1)

Grade of the ḥadīth:
The narration is mursal and therefore weak. Abu Dawud cites it in his collection of mursal reports—not in the Sunan, as the author’s wording might suggest—through his chain to Ziyad b. Ismaʿil al-Makhzumi al-Makki, who was never a Companion.
Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb states: “Ibn Maʿin declared him weak, and Yaʿqūb b. Sufyān said, ‘His ḥadīth is worthless.’”
Conversely, Ibn al-Madīnī, Abū Ḥātim, and al-Nasāʾī said: “There is no harm in him.”
In any case, the report is mursal, and a mursal narration belongs to the weak categories.

Vocabulary:
– tustarḍaʿ: to be requested to act as a wet-nurse for an infant. There is a distinction between murḍiʿ and murḍiʿah. If the term refers to the woman while she is actually suckling the child and placing the infant at her breast, she is a murḍiʿah (nursing woman). If it denotes a woman whose role or habit is to nurse, even when she is not presently doing so, she is called a murḍiʿ. Al-Zamakhsharī relied on this nuance when explaining the verse, “On the Day you behold it, every nursing woman will forget what she was nursing” (22:2).
– al-ḥamqā: with an unpointed ḥāʾ, a quiescent mīm, and the extended feminine ending ʾalif; it means a woman of limited intellect and weak discernment. Its plurals are ḥamqā and ḥumuq.