(Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak…) [113:1-5] The commentators of the Qur'an said: “The Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, had a Jewish servant boy. The Jews approached him and kept after him until he gave them some fallen hair from the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, as well as a few teeth from his comb. The Jews used these to cast a spell of black magic on him. The person who was behind this was the Jew Labid ibn al-A'sam. He then put the hair in a well belonging to Banu Zurayq called Dharwan. The Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, fell ill for a period of six month, during which the hair of his head fell off; he imagined that he slept with his wives when he did not, and was withering away without knowing the reason. As he was one day sleeping, he saw two angels coming to him. One of them sat at his head and the other at his feet. The angel who sat at his head asked: 'What is wrong with the man?' The second angel responded: 'A spell of black magic was cast on him'. The first one asked: 'And who is responsible for this sorcery?' The second angel answered: 'It is Labid ibn al-A'sam, the Jew'. The first angel asked again: 'What did he use to cast black magic on him?' The second angel said: 'He used a comb and fallen hair'. The first angel asked: 'Where is it now?' The second angel said: 'It is inside the spadix of a palm tree beneath the stepping stone which is inside the well of Dharwan', at which point the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, woke up. He said: 'O 'A'ishah, do you not think that this is from Allah to inform me of the cause of my illness?' He then sent 'Ali [ibn Abi Talib], al-Zubayr [ibn al-'Awwam] and 'Ammar [ibn Yasir] who drained the water of that well as one would drain the dust of henna. They lifted the stone and got the spadix out and found therein some of the hair of the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, as well a few teeth from his comb.
Asbab Al-Nuzul by Al-Wahidi , trans. Mokrane Guezzou
