- “If there is anything in which ill omen is real, it is in a woman, a horse, and a house.”
Aḥmad (2/85) narrated it: Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar narrated to us; Shuʿbah narrated to us from ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Zayd, who heard his father narrate it from Ibn ʿUmar, attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
This is an authentic chain according to the criteria of the two Shaykhs. Muslim also narrated it (7/34) through this route. Al-Bukhārī narrated it through another route from ʿUmar with the wording, “If there is ...”; it will appear, if Allah Most High wills, under no. 799.
By its implication, the hadith establishes that nothing is inauspicious. Its meaning is: if ill omen were established in anything at all, it would be in these three things; but it is not established in anything whatsoever.
Accordingly, the wording found in some narrations, “Ill omen is in three things,” or, “Ill omen is only in three things,” is an abridgement, with some alteration by certain narrators. And Allah knows best.
- “The sun never rises without two angels being sent at its sides, calling out so that the inhabitants of the earth hear them—except for mankind and the jinn: ‘O people, come to your Lord. For what is little yet sufficient is better than what is abundant and distracting.’ And the sun never sets without two angels being sent at its sides, calling out so that the inhabitants of the earth hear them—except for mankind and the jinn: ‘O Allah, grant the one who spends a replacement, and cause the wealth of the one who withholds to perish.’”
Ibn Ḥibbān (2476), Aḥmad (5/197), and al-Ṭayālisī (no. 979) narrated it; and Abū Nuʿaym narrated it, through both of them, in al-Ḥilyah (1/226, 2/233, 9/60), through two routes from Qatādah, from Khulayḍ ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAṣrī, from Abū al-Dardāʾ, attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.
Abū Nuʿaym said:
“Several narrators transmitted it from Qatādah, among them Sulaymān al-Taymī, Shaybān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Naḥwī, and Abū