The Messenger of Allah ﷺ took me by the hand and showed me the moon as it rose, then he said, "Seek refuge with Allah from the evil of this dark night when it grows intensely dark."
أخذ رسول الله ﷺ بيدي فأراني القمر حين طلع، فقال: تعوذي بالله من شر هذا الغاسق إذا وقب.
Ahmad (24323), Tirmidhi (3366), Hakim (2/540), Bayhaqi in Daawat (314), and Ibn Jareer in his Tafsir (24/748) all narrated it, all of them from the hadith of Ibn Abu Dhib, from Harith, from Abu Salama, who said, Ayesha said, and then he mentioned it.Its isnad is hasan because of Harith, who is Ibn Abdul-Rahman al-Qurashi al-Amiri, the maternal uncle of Ibn Abu Dhib, for he is hasan al-hadith, except that Ibn Madini considered him unknown, and this should be attributed to the scarcity of his hadith.As for His saying, "and from the evil of the blowers in knots" [Falaq 113:4], the blowing (nafth) is the act of exhaling, which sorcerers do when they prepare their sorcery treatment on something, tie a knot upon it, and then blow on it. And the nafathat are the women sorcerers. It appears from this noble verse that women are the ones who most often practice sorcery, because most of their sorcery was aimed at causing separation between a man and his wife, and because women, once they have finished the tasks of the household, have no other occupation, so they tend more toward sorcery for the purpose mentioned, and they were well known in pre-Islamic society for practicing sorcery.As for His saying, "and from the evil of an envier when he envies" [Falaq 113:5], envy (hasad) is wishing for the removal of a blessing enjoyed by someone else, and this is more common among men than among women, because the envier strives to destroy the means of the blessing possessed by the one who is envied.It is reported in the sahih collection that...