Ali bin al-Husayn took me by the hand and we set out to visit an elderly man from Quraysh known as Ibn Abu Hathma, who was praying beside a pillar. We sat down with him, and when he saw Ali he turned to him.Ali said to him, "Tell us the report from your mother about incantations."He said, "My mother told me that she used to recite incantations during the days of ignorance. When Islam came, she said, 'I will not recite any incantation until I seek permission from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.' So she went to him and asked his permission, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to her, 'Recite, so long as it contains no polytheism.'"
أخذ بيدي علي بن الحسين فانطلقنا إلى شيخ من قريش يقال له ابن أبي حثمة، يصلي إلى أسطوانة، فجلسنا إليه، فلما رأى عليا انصرف إليه، فقال له علي: حدثنا حديث أمك في الرقية، قال: حدثتني أمي أنها كانت ترقي في الجاهلية، فلما جاء الإسلام قالت: لا أرقي حتى أستأذن رسول الله ﷺ، فأتته فاستأذنته، فقال لها رسول الله ﷺ: ارقي، ما لم يكن فيها شرك.
No references are available.
Ibn Hibban (6092) and Hakim (4/57) both narrated it, each through the route of Ishaq bin Sulayman, from Jarrah bin Dahhak Kindi, from Kurayb bin Sulayman Kindi, who related it. Kurayb bin Sulayman Kindi was not deemed reliable by anyone except Ibn Hibban, though he was corroborated.The mother of Ibn Abu Hathma is his grandmother Shifa, as stated explicitly in the narration of Abu Dawud (3887), Ahmad (270959), and Hakim (4/56), all of them through the route of Abu Bakr bin Abu Hathma Qurashi, from Shifa bint Abdullah, who said,"The Prophet ﷺ came in to see me while I was with Hafsa, and he said to me, 'Will you not teach her the incantation for the sore, just as you taught her writing?'"This wording is from Abu Dawud. The wording of Hakim is that a man from the Ansar developed a sore, and he learned that Shifa bint Abdullah used to treat the sore with an incantation. So he came to her and asked her to treat him, but she said, "By Allah, I have not performed an incantation since I became Muslim." The Ansari man then went to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and told him what Shifa had said. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ called Shifa and said, "Recite it to me." So she recited it to him, and he said, "Treat him with it, and teach it to Hafsa just as you taught her writing."Hakim said, "This hadith is sahih according to the standard of the two Shaykhs (Bukhari and Muslim)." It is a single story, in which the order of presentation has been rearranged, with some parts placed earlier or later. The hadith has other chains of transmission, both connected and mursal. Daraqutni cited some of these routes in his Ilal (4057) as mursal, but he did not cite all of them.