Magic Worked on the Prophet ﷺ: The Hadith, the Objection, and the Defense

A Prophet Under a Spell?

Among the reports that unsettle careful readers of the Islamic tradition, few provoke as much debate as this one: that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was struck by magic (sihr). The narration says a man named Labid ibn al-A'sam, of Jewish background, tied knots in a charm and hid it in a well, and that the Prophet began to imagine he had done things he had not done — until Allah disclosed the cause and the cure.

The report is not from an obscure corner of the literature. It sits in the two most rigorously graded collections in Sunni Islam: Sahih al-Bukhari (hadith 5763, with related versions at 3268 and 6391) and Sahih Muslim (2189). By the standard criteria of hadith science, these chains are graded sahih — authentic.