He did this three times, then said: “Return to your work.” Ibn Mājah (3548) and al-Rūyānī, in his Musnad (fols. 148/1–2), both narrated it through the same chain from him. It is an authentic chain of transmission.

The hadith provides explicit evidence that Satan may possess a person and enter him, even if he is a righteous believer. There are many hadiths to this effect. I previously cited one of them under no. (485), from the hadith of Yaʿlā ibn Murrah, who said: “I travelled with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and I saw something astonishing from him ...” It includes: “A woman came to him and said, ‘This son of mine has been afflicted by a demon for seven years; it seizes him twice every day.’ The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ‘Bring him close to me.’ So she brought him close, and he spat into his mouth and said, ‘Get out, enemy of Allah! I am the Messenger of Allah.’” Al-Ḥākim narrated it and declared it authentic, and al-Dhahabī agreed with him; but its chain is interrupted.

I then traced it through other routes from Yaʿlā, and al-Mundhirī graded one of them as good! I concluded the documentation by saying: “In sum, the hadith is good by virtue of these corroborating reports (1). And Allah knows best.”

Then I came across a remarkable book—one of the strangest things printed in the present age—entitled The Prelude to the Impossibility of the Jinn Entering the Human Body, by its author, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Īhāb ibn Ḥusayn al-Atharī—indeed, “al-Atharī” is the fashion of the age! This title alone spares the discerning reader from having to examine the ignorance, misguidance, and deviation from