Ibn Masʿūd saw around his wife’s neck a string of beads—so the report reads, though “a charm” is perhaps the correct wording—which she had worn for the redness. He cut it off and said, “The household of ʿAbd Allah has no need of associationism.” This is how he narrated it in abbreviated form.

There are two other routes from Ibn Masʿūd for this hadith, one weaker than the other:

The first is narrated by al-Sarī ibn Ismāʿīl, from Abū al-Ḍuḥā, from Umm Nājiyah, who said: “I visited Zaynab, the wife of ʿAbd Allah, because a rash had appeared on her face, and she was wearing a charm. While I was sitting there, ʿAbd Allah came in ...” The rest of the hadith is similar, and it includes the report attributed to the Prophet. It adds: “Umm Nājiyah said: ‘O Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, we understand ruqyah and amulets, but what is a love-charm?’ He replied: ‘A love-charm is what arouses women.’”

Al-Ḥākim recorded it (4/216–217), and both he and al-Dhahabī remained silent concerning it! That was perhaps because its weakness was obvious, for al-Dhahabī himself said of al-Sarī ibn Ismāʿīl in al-Kāshif: “They abandoned him.” He detailed the scholars’ statements concerning him in al-Mughnī.

As for the other route, I had previously traced it in al-Ṣaḥīḥah (331), together with the aforementioned route of Qays ibn al-Sakan, as narrated by Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Mājah, Ibn Ḥibbān, and Aḥmad, with the wording of the hadith under discussion, but without the story or the other narrations. Something has now arisen that calls for a detailed discussion of it here, so I say: This route revolves around Yaḥyā ibn al-Jazzār, from the nephew of Zaynab, the wife of ʿAbd Allah, from Zaynab, the wife of ʿAbd Allah, from ʿAbd Allah. They differed concerning him in both its chain of transmission and its text.