Insight Editions · No. 113
Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies
Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh (eds.)
A collection of studies traces Muslim dreams and visions from early prophetic biography through Sufi traditions, Ottoman and South Asian settings, and contemporary online communities.
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Overview
Knysh, an introduction and fourteen studies by different scholars. Together they show that across fourteen centuries, from the Prophet's biography to Internet forums, Muslims treated true dreams as a continuing share of prophecy, and that telling and interpreting dreams has always been a way to claim, test and contest authority.
Argument Map
Figure 1. Argument map of the volume: a shared premise, three questions, one recurring answer and its Sufi elaborations [p 1 to 10].
What the Book Is
An edited collection that grew from a fall 2008 Middle East Studies Association panel in Washington DC and a spring 2009 follow-up conference in Ann Arbor, published by SUNY Press in 2012. Part I covers dreams outside Sufism: the earliest biography of the Prophet, Hanbali dictionaries, Shi'i encounters with the Hidden Imam, a Safavid poet, Ottoman chronicles, Deobandi reformers, the Internet and Dubai. Part II turns to Sufi literature, from classical theory to an Ottoman sultan's dream letters and the Uwaysis of Delhi [p 3, 5 to 10]. Its distinctive choice is to study dreams themselves, not only professional interpreters, and to extend the range to the present [p 4].
At a Glance
Chapter Map
| Unit | Author | Pages | Main question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Knysh | 1 to 10 | Why do dreams matter to Muslims? |
| 1 Sira of Ibn Hisham | Mirza | 15 to 28 | How does the earliest biography use dreams? |
| 2 Hanbali dictionaries | Romanov | 31 to 46 | Were "sober" Hanbalis dreamers too? |
| 3 Hidden Imam | Ghaemmaghami | 51 to 67 | Why does the Imam appear as a youth? |
| 4 Herat poet | Mancini-Lander | 77 to 92 | How does a dream teach a craft? |
| 5 Ottoman chronicles | Hagen | 99 to 117 | What philosophy of history do dreams reveal? |
| 6 Deobandis | Khan | 123 to 136 | When is a dream "just a dream"? |
| 7 Dreams online | Kinberg | 139 to 152 | Do classical norms survive on the Web? |
| 8 Dubai | alZekri | 159 to 176 | Who controls interpretation across generations? |
| 9 Sufi thought | Katz | 181 to 195 | How do Sufis read dreams differently? |
| 10 Classical Sufism | Ohlander | 199 to 207 | What are the markers of Sufi dream theory? |
| 11 Daylami | Alexandrin | 215 to 228 | How are visions verified by the Qur'an? |
| 12 Persian hagiography | Bashir | 233 to 246 | How do dream stories train sight? |
| 13 Murad III | Felek | 249 to 267 | How did a sultan fashion himself through dreams? |
| 14 Uwaysis of Delhi | Khanna | 273 to 292 | Can visions replace a chain of masters? |
Table 1. Chapter map of the book and the question each unit answers.
Introduction. Why Dreams Matter in Islamic Societies
Alexander Knysh opens the volume by setting out why dreams and waking visions have carried such weight for Muslims, past and present, and by mapping the fourteen studies that follow. His core claim is simple: for Muslims, dreams are a way of knowing, a window on the world outside the dreamer and not merely on the dreamer's hidden drives [p 1 to 2].
Ibn 'Arabi and Hodgson: Two Starting Points
Knysh begins with Ibn 'Arabi, who held that "The only reason God placed sleep in the animate world was so that everyone might . . . know that there is another world similar to the sensory world." Through imagination a dreamer sees disembodied intelligible entities in sensory form. Ibn 'Arabi often cites the saying "People are asleep, and when they die, they awake," which he reads to mean that humans never cease being dreamers. For him dreams are an indispensable instrument of cognition [p 1].
Figure 2. Two starting points for the volume.
From outside the tradition, Marshall Hodgson argued that waking and dreaming visions are a fruitful resource for personal myth formation. Dreams take colour from social expectations but give those expectations a profoundly personal relevance. Premodern Muslims, Knysh stresses, did not treat dreams as Freud did, as expressions of repressed fears and drives; they asked what dreams could tell them about "the world outside the dreamer, things that could not otherwise be known" [p 2].
Who Dreams, and Who Interprets
Although Sufis saw the friend of God as a "transposition" of the Prophet through dream knowledge, true dreams were never the monopoly of mystics or elites; in principle "each good Muslim could expect guidance from God in dreams" [p 2]. This general access was offset by the belief that special expertise was needed to read subtle symbols. Dream interpretation became an art and even a profession. By the end of the tenth century CE it had split into competing legacies: some strictly scriptural ("shari'a-minded"), others cosmopolitan, mixing Islamic material with Greek, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian and Hindu lore. The Sufis built their own oneirocritic tradition [p 3].
Figure 3. Access to true dreams is universal; reading them is specialised [p 2].
Two further points frame the whole book. First, a dream and its interpretation are hard to separate, since the very telling of a dream is already a first interpretation [p 3]. Second, dreams balance inner and outer worlds. Interpreters weighed the dreamer's personality, gender, status, trade and faith, since the same symbol may portend different things for different people. Values shape dreams and dreams shape values; Knysh insists this reciprocity "cannot be emphasized too strongly" [p 4].
Figure 4. What interpreters weighed, since one symbol may portend different things.
The Plan of the Volume
| Part | Chapters | Common thread |
|---|---|---|
| I. Non-Sufi narratives | 1 Sira; 2 Hanbalis; 3 Shi'i Hidden Imam; 4 Safavid poet; 5 Ottoman chronicles; 6 Deobandis; 7 Internet; 8 Dubai | Dreams in biography, theology, history, poetry, oral culture and new media |
| II. Sufi literature | 9 North Africa; 10 classical Sufism; 11 Daylami; 12 Persian hagiography; 13 Murad III; 14 Uwaysis of Delhi | Dreams as training, authority, genealogy and self-fashioning |
Table 2. The two halves of the book as Knysh lays them out [p 3, 5 to 10].
Across the chapters, Knysh draws out a recurring pattern. Hanbalis, assumed sober, prove as devoted to dreams as Sufis. Shi'is find in the youthful Hidden Imam "the countenance of God upon which His friends have set their affections." Ottoman chroniclers gave dreams "high explanatory value," helping readers find "orientation in a world that would otherwise be experienced as chaos." Deobandi reformers accepted dreams only so far as they served reform. Online dream posts and Dubai's shift from women's oral interpretation to male-led Salafi TV and phone lines show dreams as sites of contest over religious authority, with technology "democratizing" the process [p 5 to 8]. In Part II dreams build image, authority and status: from Katz's North African shaykhs to Bashir's Naqshbandi disciples, Murad III's self-promotion to spiritual pole, and Sayyid Hasan Rasulnuma (d. 1692), who could "show" the Prophet to his disciples [p 8 to 10].
The authority behind all this is the saying Knysh closes on: "Whoever has seen me in a dream, has seen me in truth, for Satan cannot impersonate me in a dream" [p 10].
Key takeaways
- Dreams are treated as knowledge about the world, not symptoms of the self.
- Access is universal; interpretation is specialised and contested.
- Telling a dream already interprets it.
- Across eras, dreams serve to claim and contest authority.
Chapter 1. Dreaming the Truth in the Sira of Ibn Hisham
Sarah Mirza studies the fifteen dreams in Ibn Hisham's (d. 213/828 or 218/833) redaction of Ibn Ishaq's (d. ca. 150/767) biography of the Prophet. Her finding: in the earliest Sira, dreaming and dream-telling are communal experiences that activate the community, and the text cares less about whether a dream is true than about what kind of inspiration it is [p 15, 23].
Who Dreams in the Sira
Only a few of the fifteen dreams are the Prophet's own. More belong to his clan, the Banu Muttalib, and to non-Muslims, men and women, including pre-Islamic figures; few involve prominent Companions. The Sira shows no interest in interpretation as an act or in the dreamers' lives. Whoever the dreamer, every dream is assumed to be prophetic and acted on as such [p 15]. The wording is uniform: in all fifteen cases the text uses ra'a ru'ya, "he saw a vision," sometimes with mention of going to bed, occasionally called a "visitation." Mirza links this vocabulary to Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) usage surveyed by Adolph Oppenheim in his Assyrian Dream Book, where words for dream come from roots for sleep and for seeing [p 15 to 16].
Figure 5. Who dreams in the Sira: every dream is assumed prophetic.
The Prophet's Dreams: Acted On by the Community
The Prophet's dreams are symbolic and he translates them himself. Before Uhud (Year 3) he saw cows, a dent in his sword and his hand in a coat of mail. He interpreted only the mail, as Medina, then asked his followers whether to stay or march out. They leaned toward marching; the dream "and its interpretation are no longer an issue" [p 16]. Before news of Mu'ta (Year 8) arrived, he announced the martyrdom of the standard-bearers one by one and told a dream of thrones of gold carrying them to Paradise, the last rising more slowly because its rider had hesitated in battle [p 16].
Figure 6. Before Uhud: the community acts on the dream.
Following Leah Kinberg, Mirza notes that rules on telling and fabricating dreams match the rules for transmitting hadith. Telling a dream is as important as the dream itself. The Sira reflects communal dream-telling as a form of decision making [p 17].
Sira versus Bukhari
Bukhari's "Kitab al-Ta'bir," with sixty hadith the largest dream chapter in the canonical collections, is organised as models for interpretation and behaviour, not chronology. The Prophet gives leftover milk to 'Umar and interprets it in one word, knowledge; 'Umar's trailing shirt means religion. Abu Bakr and 'Umar feature heavily there but barely in the Sira. The overlap is tiny: only the dream of two gold bracelets, blown away and read as the false prophets al-'Ansi and Musaylima, appears in both, with nearly identical wording but no shared transmitters [p 17 to 18]. The Sira names its dreamers; Bukhari often has an anonymous "man" or "Bedouin" [p 18].
Figure 7. The Sira and Bukhari's dream chapter compared.
| Feature | Sira of Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham | Bukhari, Kitab al-Ta'bir |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation | Chronological, within events of the community | Thematic, by dream symbol |
| Main interest | Drama and communal action | Models for interpretation and conduct |
| Dreamers | Named; many non-Muslims and kin | Often unnamed; Abu Bakr and 'Umar prominent |
| Dominant type | Auditory message dreams | Symbolic dreams with brief keys |
Table 3. How the two earliest bodies of dream material differ, as Mirza compares them [p 17 to 18].
Message Dreams and the ANE Frame
Most Sira dreams feature disembodied voices and command-and-response patterns, like the account of the first revelation. Mirza therefore compares them with Oppenheim's best-attested ANE type, the message dream: a deity's intent revealed to a king or priest in clear terms, often on the brink of war, demanding submissive consent [p 18]. ANE accounts share a frame: setting (dreamer, time, place, often deep sleep), content, then a return to the frame with the reaction or fulfilment. Ibn Ishaq follows the same frame: a third-person introduction with ra'a ru'ya, a first-person report with ra'aytu ru'ya, then the outcome [p 18 to 19].
Figure 8. The message-dream frame Mirza traces from ANE texts into Ibn Ishaq's Sira [p 18 to 19].
Message Dreams Beyond the Prophet
Every dream by someone other than the Prophet is a message dream, so the Prophet is not the only one who receives information through dreams [p 19]. The call to prayer is the key case. The Prophet had rejected a horn and settled on a wooden clapper when 'Abdallah b. Zayd reported a "man in two green garments" who taught him a "better way," the whole adhan line by line. The Prophet called it a true vision; 'Umar arrived "dragging his cloak on the ground," saying he had seen the same. Oppenheim notes such paired confirming dreams in late classical texts and the Gospels [p 19 to 20].
Figure 9. The call to prayer comes through a message dream.
Non-Muslims dream true too. The polytheist Himyarite king Rabi'a b. Nasr saw fire devouring his land; two interpreters foretold Ethiopian conquest and a true prophet [p 20]. 'Abd al-Muttalib, sleeping in the sacred enclosure, received an incubation dream, commanded four times over three dreams to dig Zamzam [p 20]. Amina, pregnant, heard a voice naming her son, a passive "annunciation" though ANE message dreams usually go to men [p 21].
Badr: Warnings from the Other Side
The Prophet's aunt 'Atika, who did not convert, dreamed of a herald on camelback warning of disaster in three days and a rock shattering over every house in Mecca. The story spread; Abu Jahl mocked, "since when have you had a prophetess (nabiyya) among you?" Later Juhaym b. al-Salt, "between waking and sleeping," saw a herald naming every Qurayshi to die at Badr; Abu Jahl jeered, "Here's another prophet (nabi) from Banu al-Muttalib!" [p 21 to 22]. The two dreams run in parallel, as ANE repetition does, and the Quraysh resist them precisely because the dreamers are the Prophet's kin [p 22].
Types of Inspiration
The Sira shows little concern to authenticate dreams; it cares about distinguishing types of inspiration. Toufic Fahd notes that prophet, diviner and poet differ only by intermediary: angel, jinn or satan. The Qur'an distances the Prophet from poet and soothsayer (26:221 to 224; 69:40 to 42). The Sira gives many oracles predicting the same events as the dreams, yet none is said to come through a dream [p 23 to 24]. The dreamers receive verbal revelation in sleep, as the Prophet did at Hira: "He came to me . . . while I was asleep," and on waking the words were "as though these words were written on my heart." Tabari's recension adds his dread of being called poet or possessed. As in ANE accounts, the messenger is of towering size and is described visually only after waking [p 24 to 25].
Conclusion and Appendix
Dream accounts should be counted alongside poetry, lists of participants and Qur'an interpretation as stock units of early sira narrative [p 26]. The appendix lists all fifteen dreams, from Rabi'a b. Nasr's fire to the gold bracelets, including Tufayl b. 'Amr reading his own death and the Prophet seeing Gabriel holding a horse's rein before Badr [p 26 to 28].
Key takeaways
- The Sira's dreams are acted on together; meaning matters less than the action they trigger.
- Message dreams dominate; non-Muslims and women, especially the Prophet's kin, dream true.
Chapter 2. Dreaming Hanbalites: Dream-Tales in Biographical Dictionaries
Maxim Romanov challenges the image of the Hanbalis as the sober opposite of the Sufis. Their two great biographical dictionaries are full of dreams, and these dreams do a clear job: they perfect the image of a scholar and certify his standing in the community, often by way of ordinary, unnamed believers [p 31, 45 to 46].
The Sources and the Numbers
Romanov works from Ibn Abi Ya'la's (d. 527/1133) Tabaqat al-Hanabila and Ibn Rajab's (d. 795/1392) supplement, together slightly more than twelve hundred biographies across roughly five centuries [p 32]. A Saudi editor of the first even labelled some material "Sufi superstitions." Romanov's broader point is that any shaykh who leads a popular community is likely to become a local saint, and dreams are one mechanism of that communal sanctification [p 31]. These are prosopographies, which "make individuals members"; some entries exist only because a person transmitted a story [p 32].
The dictionaries hold 184 dream narratives in 95 of 1,259 biographies. In 127 the protagonist is dreamt about ("passive" dreams); 98 were seen after his death; in 62 of the 127 the dreamer is nameless, most likely a layman [p 32].
Figure 10. The Hanbali numbers, after Romanov.
Figure 11. Most Hanbali dreams are about the subject of a biography, not by him [p 32].
Dreams sit in an auxiliary section after name, teachers, works and death, and count as "excellent qualities." The number of dreams grows with a person's importance: Ibn Abi Ya'la gives his own father six, the most after Ibn Hanbal; Ibn Rajab favours the Banu Qudama and Banu Taymiyya. Seventeen famous shaykhs account for 96 passages, 83% passive, half from nameless dreamers, which points to their sway over the rank and file [p 32 to 33].
Why Dreams Count
Sleep resembles death (Q. 39:42), and death was a key theme of Hanbali preaching. Ibn Abi Ya'la opens his father's dream section with prophetic sayings: a believer's dream is how God speaks to his servant; good tidings continue after prophecy. He ends with Ibn Sirin: "Whatever a deceased person tells you in a dream is true, for he is in the Abode of Truth" [p 33 to 34]. Ibn Hanbal himself told his companions to transmit a sinful neighbour's dream in which the Prophet prayed for him "for you do not curse any of my followers" [p 34].
Figure 12. Why dreams count for Hanbalis.
Social Consequences
Dreams had public effects. After a commoner dreamt the Prophet praised Ibn Salama al-Qurashi, crowds tossed the shaykh in the air while he whispered, "I seek refuge with God from this misfortune!" Ibn Sam'un paused his sermon so as not to wake a dozing listener who might be seeing the Prophet; he was [p 34 to 35]. Ibn al-Jawzi saw God three times in dreams, which Ibn Rajab thought proof enough of his correctness [p 35]. A man travelled 1,200 miles by sea to tell Ibn Hanbal that God and the angels were pleased with him, then left without asking a single question [p 35]. A man who resented Ibn Hanbal dreamed he could not catch up with him and the Prophet; once his grudge faded he almost could, and began telling people to follow him [p 35].
Muhammad b. Nasir (d. 550/1155f), Ibn al-Jawzi's teacher, dreamt on the first night of Rajab 494 that the Prophet told him three times, "Hold fast to the school of this shaykh!" The shaykh advised Shafi'i law with Hanbali principles; he replied, "I do not want to be of two colors" [p 36 to 37].
Figure 13. The dream: "Hold fast to the school of this shaykh!".
The Ambivalence of Sleep
To dream one must sleep, and many Hanbali shaykhs avoided it. Abu Ya'la split the night between sleep, devotion and writing; one shaykh treated sleep and forgetfulness of God as synonyms. 'Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi (d. 600/1203) barely slept, yet his biography has eleven dreams, all about him: here passive dreams are a convenient device [p 37 to 38].
A Typology of Hanbali Dreams
Two details stand out. A dream at the time of a caliph's quarrel with the Seljuq sultan, in which Ibn Hanbal prays for the caliph, shows a change in Hanbali attitudes to the 'Abbasids [p 43]. And in the early period the Prophet answers dreamers himself; later he delegates to living shaykhs whose memory the community keeps [p 44].
Conclusion: Perfecting the Human Scholar
Fred Donner notes that Qur'anic characters are "bleached out," wholly good or evil. Scholars in dictionaries are "far too humane," so dreams serve to perfect their images. Posthumous and affirmative dreams need no interpretation; posthumous ones give proof "directly from the Abode of Truth" [p 45 to 46]. Ibn Rajab even placed Ibn Nasir's conversion dream in the biography of the shaykh he was told to follow, turning it into an affirmation. The limited set of patterns suggests conscious selection. Yet sharing such dreams was also popular homage, still alive: after the preacher 'Abd al-Hamid Kishk died in 1996, a man said he had dreamt of Kishk "being escorted up to heaven by a group of angels" [p 46].
Key takeaways
- Hanbalis used dreams as fully as Sufis did.
- Most dreams are about a scholar, told by laymen, after his death.
- Dreams scale with importance and were selected to build status.
- Authority in dreams shifts from the Prophet to local shaykhs.
Chapter 3. Numinous Vision, Messianic Encounters: The Youthful Imam
Omid Ghaemmaghami asks a question the sources never pose: why does the Twelver Shi'i Hidden Imam, who vanished as a small child, appear to his followers as a beautiful youth? His answer, using typology, is that the Prophet's vision of God as a comely youth is the type, and encounters with the youthful Hidden Imam are its antitype: the same object, a changed subject [p 52 to 53, 66].
The Problem
Visions and dream encounters are among the most central phenomena in Twelver hagiography and have long legitimised the institution of guardianship (walaya). Reports of meeting the "Lord of the Age" express a need for continued guidance and a longing to fill the void of his concealment [p 51]. They share stock motifs: the Imam is a youth (shabb) of overwhelming beauty and fragrance who gives help, guiding lost pilgrims, answering hard questions or teaching a healing prayer [p 52]. One might expect him to appear as a boy, or as a venerable shaykh with prolonged life. He does neither [p 52].
Figure 14. The three elements the chapter tracks in visions of the Imam.
Typology as Method
Following Goppelt, Corbin and Frye, the chapter sets aside historical authenticity for spiritual hermeneutics. Frye defines typology as "a figure of speech that moves in time": the type in the past, the antitype later, resting on the assumption that history has a point that later events reveal [p 52 to 53]. The three elements tracked are youth, beauty and initiation [p 53].
The Hadith of the Vision
The Qur'an supports both a vision of God at the Resurrection (75:22 to 23) and his incomprehensibility (6:103), what Corbin called a coincidentia oppositorum [p 53 to 54]. Companions disagreed on whether the Prophet saw God during the ascent; Qastallani (d. 923/1517) records that all views "speak the truth for they only tell what they have heard" [p 54]. The key report, from Ibn 'Abbas, says "I saw my Lord in the most beautiful of forms." A contested version from Umm al-Tufayl specifies a youth with abundant hair, feet in greenery, golden sandals and a golden veil [p 54 to 55].
Figure 15. What Corbin called a coincidentia oppositorum.
This version was known in Shi'i circles of the third and fourth centuries AH. Kulayni (d. ca. 329/941) refers to it. The Isma'ili Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 322/933 to 934) judged it sound and removed anthropomorphism by reading it as a dream: "Many people see similar dreams," of their Lord, the angels or the Resurrection, and no one can deny them [p 55 to 56]. So the hadith was under active discussion just as the occultation became doctrine [p 56].
The Qa'im Will Come as a Youth
Shi'i messianic hadith disagree on many things, but agree on the Qa'im's age. He will appear "in the form of a youth . . . less than forty years of age"; at the Ka'ba "No one will recognize him"; Ja'far al-Sadiq, pulling his wrinkled skin, said "I have become old, whereas your master is a young man" [p 56 to 57]. Al-Husayn uses the same phrase found in the hadith of the vision, shabb muwaffaq, "a youth in his best years." People will reject him for coming young when they expect an elder [p 57]. Descriptions dwell on beauty: a face like the moon, broad forehead, aquiline nose, a mole on the right cheek, even the beauty of Joseph [p 57 to 58].
Eight Encounters
| Period | Witness | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Lesser occultation | Pilgrim from al-Mada'in (in Kulayni) | A youth at 'Arafat gives a beggar twenty mithqals of gold and vanishes [p 58 to 59] |
| Lesser | 'Ali b. Ibrahim b. Mahziyar | Dream sends him to Mecca; a sweet-smelling youth leads him to a tent of light; the Imam's face is "as luminous as the moon" [p 59 to 60] |
| Lesser | 'Ali b. Ibrahim al-Fadaki | A youth at the Ka'ba declares "I am the Mahdi" [p 60 to 61] |
| Lesser (293/906) | Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Khalaf | A brown-skinned youth of unmatched beauty; a dark man's terrifying cry; a dream next year: "the divine cause/command is near" [p 61] |
| Greater | Hasan b. Mithla | Dream summons to a youth of thirty on a throne with al-Khidr; ordered to build what many take to be the Jamkaran mosque [p 62] |
| Greater (via Majlisi) | Amir Ishaq al-Astarabadi | Lost and dying of thirst, a beautiful youth on a camel brings water and guides him [p 62 to 63] |
| Greater | Mirza Muhammad al-Astarabadi (d. 1028/1619) | A youth in the circumambulation gives him red roses out of season [p 63] |
| Greater | Believer from Kashan | 'Ali leads him in a dream to a radiant youth, the Lord of the Age [p 63] |
Table 5. The eight accounts Ghaemmaghami uses; greater-occultation stories are more embellished [p 58 to 63].
Imam as Theophany
Why link these to a vision of God? In early Shi'i theology, God's attributes have loci of manifestation, the Prophet and the Imams. Ontologically God cannot be known; epistemologically one may speak of the Imams as God. Amir-Moezzi: "knowledge of the reality of the Imam is the equivalent to knowledge of that which can be known about God" [p 64]. This keeps God's essence transcendent: the Imams warn against anthropomorphism. Ja'far tells Abu Basir that believers see God now, but "seeing with the heart is not the same as seeing with the eye" [p 64 to 65]. "Were it not for God, we would not be known, and were it not for us, God would not be known" [p 65].
Figure 16. Ghaemmaghami's typological reading of the hadith of the vision and the Imam encounters [p 53, 66].
Conclusion
The visions of the Hidden Imam are "a realized form" of what the hadith prefigured, and a heightening of it: once an unnamed youth, now the Imam, repeatedly encountered [p 66]. Goppelt limits typology to divinely ordained types of greater future realities; Frye pictured the two parts of the Bible as "a double mirror" [p 67]. Todd Lawson notes that "typology frequently erases or collapses time." For a minority often ignored by the majority, encounters with the youthful deliverer both explain history and explain it away [p 67].
Key takeaways
- The Imam's youth is an unexamined axiom of Shi'i sources.
- The hadith of God as a youth circulated as the occultation took shape.
- The Imam is the knowable face of an unknowable God.
- Visions offered a minority a way to live with its history.
Chapter 4. Dreaming the Elixir of Knowledge: A Poet from Herat
Derek Mancini-Lander reads the self-narrative of 'Abd Allah Bihishti Haravi, a Safavid-era poet, whose rise to eloquence turns on a single dream. His argument: dreams transmitted practical, embodied knowledge, knowing how rather than knowing that, and certified a person's place in a social and cosmic hierarchy [p 77 to 78, 91 to 92].
Why a Poet's Dream
Building on Jonathan Berkey and Michael Chamberlain's study of knowledge as social practice, the chapter shifts attention from propositional to practical knowing [p 78]. In Safavid texts of every kind, from biographies to licences and wills, dreams appear at decisive moments, and apprentices in almost every vocation, sovereigns to craftsmen, report meeting prophets or saints who passed on key knowledge in dreams. Public narration of such a dream attested that the transfer had occurred [p 78 to 79]. Poets were everywhere, yet how they learned their craft is little studied, and no study of dreams in early modern Persian poetry exists [p 79]. Bihishti was a minor poet, but he deliberately puts his dream at the centre of his work and theorises about it [p 79 to 80].
The Poet's Life
Born in Herat in 1006/1597 to 1598, Bihishti studied versification under Fasihi Ansari Haravi (d. 1049/1649), then moved to India, serving the Mughal prince Murad Bakhsh, for whom he began his masnavi Nur al-Mashriqayn, a response to Khaqani. The only manuscript is dated 1067/1657 in Ahmadabad [p 80 to 81].
From Infirmity to Speech
Born two months early, Bihishti was left blind in one eye, lame and nearly mute: literally a nobody, unfit for any vocation. Speech, sight and movement are linked from the first lines, so his progress toward eloquence reads as bodily healing [p 81]. After his father kept a forty-night vigil at Herat's saints' tombs, the boy spoke for the first time in the bazaar, "Papa, get me some bread," and his paralysed leg could walk [p 81 to 82]. A learned man saw in him "discernment" (nazar), a faculty yoking sight, reason and judicious action, and taught him for about twelve years [p 82].
Figure 17. Speech, sight and movement linked from the first lines.
Ahli the Qalandar and the Assignment
Under Fasihi, whose pen name means "the eloquent one," Bihishti met Ahli, a wandering qalandar who knew all poets' verses going back to the earliest times and judged Bihishti "just a neophyte" [p 83]. Ahli humbly asked for a poem of eight hemistichs on one rhyme, alluding in the last line to a predecessor's quatrain: a musamman-ruba'i. The final line normally holds the poet's own pen name, so the exercise teaches deference; by begging a poem from his student, the master models the lesson that mastery comes only through humility [p 83 to 84].
Ahl means tame or temperate; ahliyat means worthiness and expertise gained by training. One word joins restraint and servitude with skill and advancement [p 84]. Ahli thus embodies three linked kinds of knowing: intellectual, technical and social-spiritual [p 84 to 85].
| Platonic term | Kind of knowing | In Bihishti's story |
|---|---|---|
| Episteme | Intellectual knowledge | Twelve years of schooling |
| Techne | Technical craft | Fasihi's teaching of versification |
| Poiesis | Engendering, social-spiritual knowledge passed through a hierarchical bond, first in the body, then in the mind | Ahli's exercise and the dream-beings' orientation toward 'Ali |
Table 6. Mancini-Lander's three classes of knowing, mapped to the poet's teachers [p 84 to 85, 89].
Poiesis, as the author uses it, is the process by which a relationship between higher and lower ranks places the student in a deferential posture, so that "a knowledge of the whole order of things" is generated in his body. Being liminal, this kind of knowledge is often passed in intermediary spaces: in dreams [p 85].
The Dream
Struggling all night with the assignment, the untamed youth fell asleep near dawn and saw a paradise-like gathering of beings bright as the sun, clad in white. One, with the voice of David, sang elegies for the martyred Imams; all wept. A youth asked if he had composed Ahli's poem. Bihishti protested that he was a beginner, his temperament still raw. The reply: do not labour; compose in praise of 'Ali [p 86 to 87].
Figure 18. From neophyte to poet.
On waking he composed the quatrain to 'Ali. Even here he names himself only indirectly as "the caller," an "un-saying" that keeps his posture of humility [p 87].
The Name
At Fasihi's gathering his master asked why he gave no pen name. A devotee, Bihishti replied, must receive it from his master. Fasihi wrote a short poem saying the "heavenly-natured ones" had named him Bihishti, "Heavenly One." The name points both to him and to the beings who perfected him, so signing it is remembrance and self-promotion at once [p 87 to 88]. His closing tribute says the "elixir of knowledge" is found in companionship with Fasihi, and slips in Ahli's credit by a pun on ahliyat [p 88 to 89]. Two guides, one outward and one inward, mirror the craft master and spiritual guide of the futuvvat fraternities [p 89].
Figure 19. Bihishti's account read as a rite of initiation [p 90].
Conclusion
One account cannot prove that Safavid poets underwent formal initiation [p 91]. But dreams at moments of social change across professions show they were standard devices that reaffirmed the social-cosmic order: "promotions sanctioned in heaven." That function does not cancel their power as real vehicles of knowledge. Being "betwixt and between worlds," dreams carried "simulacral, yet practical, even somatic, forms of knowing" that produced "total reorientations in being" [p 91 to 92].
Key takeaways
- Dreams carried knowing how, not only knowing that.
- Humility before masters was itself the knowledge that unlocked skill.
- Outward and inward guides divide craft from meaning.
- Dream narratives certified promotion as sanctioned in heaven.
Chapter 5. Dreaming 'Osmans: Of History and Meaning
Gottfried Hagen reads dreams in Ottoman chronicles of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries not as fiction to be skipped but as a window on an unspoken philosophy of history. Dreams were "taken for real by the actors in the narrative, by author of the account, and finally by his audience," and they let chroniclers explain events, cope with catastrophe and promise glory [p 99 to 100, 117].
The Question
Ottoman historiography was dynasty-centred and additive, with little interpretation by the historian. Modern historians have dismissed its dreams as "obvious fiction" [p 99 to 100]. Hagen sets factuality aside, since every remembered dream "is already a construction," and asks why chroniclers made room for dreams. Using Karl Löwith's Meaning in History, he looks for a theology of history in three forms: divine guidance toward a goal, predestination, and divine interference to restore justice [p 100 to 101].
Two Dreaming 'Osmans
The central case is a dream of 'Osman II (r. 1618 to 1622), told by Huseyn Tughi, a janissary officer and eyewitness to the Sultan's fall. After being talked out of a pilgrimage, amid rumours that he planned to move the capital and replace the janissaries, the Sultan dreamt that the Prophet took the Qur'an from his hand, slapped him and dragged him from the throne; he could not rub his face in the dust of the Prophet's feet [p 101 to 102]. The comparison case is the founding dream of 'Osman I (d. 1324?), oldest in 'Ashiqpashazade: a moon rose from the chest of the saintly shaykh Edebali and entered 'Osman's chest; a tree sprang from his navel and its shadow covered the earth, with mountains and streams feeding gardens and fountains [p 103 to 104].
Figure 20. Competing readings of 'Osman II's dream.
The dream is narrated as objective reality. A dream reaches the chronicle only if it was told to others and judged meaningful; chroniclers place such dreams at decisive moments [p 102 to 103].
| Form | How meaning arrives | Ottoman examples |
|---|---|---|
| Theorematic | Stated outright by an authority, usually the Prophet | Evliya Celebi asks for travel instead of intercession and receives both; Katib Celebi is told to honour the name Muhammad [p 103] |
| Allegorical | Coded in symbols; needs an expert interpreter | 'Osman I's moon and tree; 'Osman II's fall from the throne [p 103 to 104] |
Table 7. The two ways dreams convey meaning in the chronicles [p 103 to 104].
Interpretation Is Part of the Event
The interpreter is rarely neutral; meaning emerges between two involved people. Edebali told 'Osman that God had given sovereignty to him and his descendants, and gave him his daughter in marriage [p 104 to 105]. For 'Osman II there were two competing readings. His tutor 'Omer Efendi said the Qur'an was taken because the Sultan had abandoned his intention to go to Mecca; the Sultan insisted on the pilgrimage. Tughi blames 'Omer, who had a private motive, so exonerating the Sultan through the old trope of the corrupt adviser [p 105 to 106]. Yet interpretation to suit one's interest was legitimate; manuals offered several meanings, and the choice of interpretation could shape the outcome [p 106]. An interpreter could even claim a reward, as Edebali's follower did, since reading a dream rightly gave a share in its fulfilment [p 106].
Figure 21. Meaning emerges between two involved people.
Motivation
Dreams supply motives for otherwise puzzling acts. The lady of Aydos dreamt a handsome youth lifted her from a pit and dressed her in silk; she handed the castle to the Turks and married one [p 106 to 107]. 'Osman I's dream sealed the alliance of tribal chief and dervish lodge that produced the dynasty. 'Osman II's insistence on the pilgrimage reignited the janissary revolt, making the tutor's reading the first reversal of a classical tragedy [p 107]. Köse Mihal converted after the Prophet named him 'Abdullah in a dream the same night; Mehmed II's idea of hauling ships into the Golden Horn in 1453 came in a dream [p 108 to 109].
Figure 22. Three functions of dreams in Ottoman chronicles.
Annunciation of Catastrophe
A second reading came from the Sufi Mahmud Hudayi: the dream "will come true very soon"; repent and seek help from the tombs of the saints. The Sultan visited the tomb of Abu Ayyub, but his guards committed injustices while seeking sacrificial animals, and injustice by servants falls on the king [p 109 to 110]. The more symbolic Sufi reading carries more weight with the chronicler [p 109 to 110]. Tughi explains the regicide by the curse of the brother 'Osman had strangled; Katib Celebi, more eager to exonerate the Sultan, left a dilemma that fed lasting trauma [p 110]. Predestined fate cannot be changed; penitence only ensures one does not die a sinner [p 111].
Sometimes the dream reveals divine wisdom. Before the defeat at Hatvan in 1593, a pious man of Pest dreamt of the Prophet checking a register of martyrs: "the ink has dried." Their deaths were best for the frontier. The informant was told he too was a martyr, "but not a martyr in this battle"; he was later killed unjustly by Murtaza Pasha. Divine justice is enacted within history [p 111 to 112].
Annunciation of Glory
Murad III learned of his accession in a dream; Mehmed II dreamt of being thrown by Uzun Hasan, then ripping out his liver. A scholar confirmed victory by a Qur'an omen whose letters summed to 878 [p 112 to 113]. Edebali's promise, open-ended, covers all later Ottoman success. Müneccimbashi (d. 1702) put the omens at the head of his Ottoman chapter and placed that chapter last in his world history, as though all history converged on it [p 114].
Figure 23. The functions of dreams in Ottoman historiography as Hagen revises his earlier typology [p 107 to 114, 117].
A Goal Within History
'Osman I's and Ertughrul's dreams hint at world rule, a unidirectional sense of history unlike Ibn Khaldun's cycles, but the goal stays inside history [p 115]. Unlike Christian salvation history, in Muslim historiography history is what separates man from salvation; salvation comes when history ends [p 115]. Chroniclers rarely computed the end of time; Mevlana 'Isa's apocalyptic history was an exception. History was a store of moral lessons, 'ibret, the very word in Tughi's title [p 115 to 116]. "If God wills a thing, he arranges its causes" [p 116].
Conclusion
Motivation and annunciation are functions present together in most episodes. Dreams have "high explanatory value": they supply motives, ease catastrophe and promise better times, offering "orientation in a world that would otherwise be experienced as chaos," though no goal beyond historical time. Religion here is not mere propaganda but a means to give experience meaning [p 117].
Key takeaways
- Dreams in chronicles are interpretive devices, not ornaments.
- Interpreters are actors, and choosing a reading shapes events.
- Dreams are read backward from known outcomes.
Chapter 6. Sometimes a Dream Is Just a Dream: The Deobandi Balance
Fareeha Khan explains why Deobandi scholars of South Asia seem to contradict themselves on dreams, dismissing them one moment and calling them "absolute guidance" the next. Her answer: they taught a balanced interest in dreams, valuable as a portion of prophecy but always weighed against law, character and the real goal of the spiritual path [p 123 to 125].
The Apparent Contradiction
Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi (d. 1943) often said, "I do not consider dreams to be an authoritative thing in this spiritual path." To a man seeking a prayer to see the Prophet in a dream, he replied that a more needed prayer was to be made attentive to the essentials, such as daily prayer [p 123]. Yet when a man dreamt that the Prophet angrily called him "a murid (disciple) of an innovator!" and kicked him in the ribs, Thanawi wrote: "This dream is absolute guidance," told him to leave his guide and to follow Thanawi's own books [p 123 to 124]. The question is what makes one dream decisive and another irrelevant [p 124].
Deoband and Its Dreams
The Deoband seminary, founded in north India in 1867, saw itself as heir to classical Sunni learning: Hanafi law, Sufi orders (chiefly Chishti) and Sunni theology. "Reformist" here meant improving practice, curbing forms of the mawlid that encouraged polytheism or Hindu custom, not abolishing Sufism [p 125]. Deobandi biographies are full of dreams. The school's founding was marked by dreams: Maulana Rafi'u'd-Din saw the Ka'ba in Deoband's garden and the Prophet giving milk to students there; such dreams gave the founders "a self-fulfilling confidence in their mission" [p 125 to 126]. Masters also used dream interpretation to direct disciples' next steps [p 126].
Where Dreams Come From
Mufti Muhammad Shafi' 'Uthmani, citing Tafsir al-Mazhari, lists three kinds of dream: images from waking life; dreams influenced by the devil; and a kind of inspiration "activated to warn a servant of Allah or to give him glad tidings." True dreams arise when the freed soul touches 'alam al-mithal, a world where even attributes and meanings have forms; disturbances can mix false imaginings in, which makes interpretation hard [p 126 to 127].
Figure 24. Three kinds of dream, after Tafsir al-Mazhari.
Dreams also exert some control over events. A dream "when related, and interpreted by the listener . . . actualizes as interpreted," so tell it only to the wise or a well-wisher. Some destiny is suspended; "I am as My servant thinks of Me" means a bad reading can implant fear that brings about bad events [p 127 to 128].
Figure 25. So tell it only to the wise or a well-wisher.
Dreams and the Shari'a
One must never act on a dream against the law or scholarly consensus, discount a hadith because of one, or use one as evidence in court. A dream of Paradise is encouragement, not a guarantee and not an exemption [p 128]. Muhammad Taqi 'Uthmani tells of a judge who dreamt the Prophet advised a ruling that did not fit the Shari'a. The assembled scholars leaned toward the dream until 'Izz al-Din b. 'Abd al-Salam declared: "It is not lawful to decide a case in light of indications contained in a dream." The Sunna reaches us through verifiable chains, not dreams [p 128 to 130].
Who Dreams True, Who Interprets
Anyone can dream true: three of the four dreams in Sura Joseph belong to unbelievers, and Nebuchadnezzar, Chosroes and the Prophet's aunt 'Atika dreamt true [p 130]. Unbelievers can also have waking illumination (kashf). Thanawi warns that such experiences, even from dhikr, are no proof that one has reached God, which "has nothing at all to do with such matters" [p 130]. A non-Muslim's true dream has only worldly consequences; the "glad tidings" that remain of prophecy, with consequences in the next world too, require faith [p 130 to 131].
| View | Holder | What interpretation needs |
|---|---|---|
| A science | Shaykh Amin Kholwadia | Deep knowledge of revelation, spiritual work (dhikr, worship) and training under a qualified interpreter [p 131 to 132] |
| A gift | Thanawi, praising Muhammad Ya'qub | Intuition; Ya'qub "received" the meaning of a strange dream about a girl placed in a dog while standing in prayer [p 132 to 133] |
Table 8. Two Deobandi views of the interpreter's qualification [p 131 to 133].
Thanawi himself said he was "simply not predisposed to dream interpretation" [p 132].
Dreams as Passing States
Thanawi classes the true dream, with illumination and inspiration, among ahwal: involuntary, temporary states. Because religion requires the fruits of effort, such states are not part of religion; they are even a form of worldliness, like joy. Harm comes not when a state lifts but from the despair that follows [p 133]. The goal is annihilation of one's attributes and being shaped by God's, acting without cause, in constant conformity with the divine will [p 133 to 134].
Conclusion
Deobandi concern with the masses' practice explains Thanawi's stance. He would quote: "I am the slave of the Sun [i.e., the Prophet] and can only speak of the Sun" [p 135]. Taqi 'Uthmani notes two popular errors, giving dreams no value or making their recipients saints. A true dream can be a test, a veil to the Real. Everything is measured by its ultimate religious benefit, which is why the same master could reject one dream and revere another [p 135 to 136].
Key takeaways
- Dreams count, but never against law or as legal evidence.
- The worth of a dream depends on the dreamer's character and on how it is read.
- True dreams are passing states, not the goal.
- Seemingly inconsistent responses follow one rule: religious benefit.
Chapter 7. Dreams Online: The Prophet in Contemporary Dreams
Leah Kinberg turns to blogs, forums and chain emails, sources that for the first time make ordinary people's dreams visible. Her conclusion: dreams of the Prophet keep the status they held in early Islam, and the dreamers, quoting Qur'an and hadith, produce "some sort of a neo-classical text" [p 141, 152].
The Classical Background
Prophecy ended with Muhammad, but "the tidings remain": mubashshirat, defined as dreams revealed to pious Muslims and part of prophecy [p 139]. The dead, dwelling in the abode of truth, are "those who know"; the living are those who act. The dead appear in dreams to instruct, and the living turn knowledge into deeds, though not in judicial matters [p 139 to 140]. The many classical reports of the Prophet in dreams show a real need for him in particular. The saying "He who has seen me in a dream has . . . certainly seen . . . me," usually ending "for the devil does not take my form," both guards against illusion and raises the dream to the level of an authentic hadith [p 140].
Figure 26. The dead and the living in the classical background [p 139].
That confidence invited fabrication, which traditionists knew well: whoever lies about a dream must tie a knot in a barley corn on Judgment Day, an impossible task and so a threat of Hell [p 140].
The Internet as a Source
Studies of Muslims online focused on large portals; small forums and personal blogs, with their familial feel, invite people to share private fears and beliefs [p 140 to 141]. All links were accessed on July 31, 2009 [p 141].
| Type | Example | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Private: honesty | Layal, Salé, 2006: a veiled figure carried in a garden; later a magnificent man says "I am the messenger of Allah whom you have seen" | Fear of unintentionally lying about the Prophet still binds the conscience [p 141 to 142] |
| Private: earned vision | Riyadh, 2001: as a teen the Prophet sleeps in the house with his face covered; after six years of piety he smiles at the dreamer | Seeing the Prophet is a reward that can be earned; hence many queries on how to see him [p 142 to 144] |
| Communal: war | Gaza war dreams of early 2009: promises of victory, Paradise for fighters, the Prophet in a "turban of war" | Encouragement in hardship, modelled on angelic help at Badr [p 144 to 145] |
| Chain letter | "Shaykh Ahmad," attendant of the Prophet's shrine in Medina | Dream authority used to compel copying; scholars respond [p 146 to 151] |
Table 9. Kinberg's online dream types [p 141 to 151].
War Dreams Old and New
War dreams are not new. Kinberg notes similar dreams from wars in Egypt, Iraq, Chechnya and Afghanistan, and classical precedents: Tariq b. Ziyad in 92/711 saw the Prophet and four caliphs walking on water announcing his victory in Spain; Qutuz (d. 658/1259) learned in a dream he would defeat the Mongols [p 146]. One Gaza text links three flags to Khalid, Sa'd and Husayn, placing the present war among the great battles of early Islam [p 145].
Figure 27. War dreams old and new.
The Chain Letter of Shaykh Ahmad
The letter, circulating at least since the 1970s, has the Prophet tell Shaykh Ahmad that 160,000 people died without faith in a week, that women disobey husbands and the rich neglect the poor. Whoever copies and spreads it gets a palace in Heaven, wealth and forgiveness; whoever does not loses intercession and his "face will blacken." It closes with lists of those who prospered or perished [p 147 to 148]. By tracing its source to "the Pen of the Almighty from the Guarded Tablet," it claims the rank of a hadith qudsi [p 148]. Unlike most chain letters, it drives recipients to ask scholars what to do [p 148].
Figure 28. The chain letter of Shaykh Ahmad.
Ibn Baz answered in a fatwa first printed in 1398/1978 and again online. His points [p 149 to 150]:
- The shaykh claims he saw the Prophet before sleeping, but after his death the Prophet never appears to a waking person.
- The author is an "Ignorant Sufi" trying to start a new religion that ranks a letter above the Qur'an.
- Even copying the Qur'an cannot guarantee wealth, debt relief and forgiveness.
- Knowing how many died in faith is knowledge of the unseen, which belongs to God alone (Q 27:65).
Conclusion
The sites are unselective and anonymous, a weak sole basis for scholarship. But since the Web runs "on demand," their volume signals high interest, and they reveal private feelings hidden elsewhere [p 151 to 152]. Every dream examined involves the Prophet and the idea that his support is available anywhere and any time. Whether this reflects the modern revival of classical material for argument, or a lasting hidden sentiment, both play a part: dreams of the Prophet have regained a function as old as Islam [p 152].
Key takeaways
- The Internet makes private, contemporary dreams visible for study.
- Old norms persist: fear of lying, vision as reward, help in war.
- Dream authority can be hijacked; scholars answer within the tradition.
- Online dreamers write neo-classical texts.
Chapter 8. Transforming Contexts of Dream Interpretation in Dubai
Muhammad alZekri traces dream interpretation in Dubai across three generations, from the pearling era to satellite TV. His thesis: whoever controls dream interpretation exercises moral authority, and in Dubai that authority moved from women's oral gatherings to male, text-based Salafi media, while women keep finding ways back in [p 159, 175].
Generation A: Women's Dream Gatherings
Generation A grew up as Japanese cultured pearls undermined pearling in the 1930s. Community ties were tight: neighbourhood (farij) living, Bani Yas family bonds, marriage within alliances [p 160]. Their dream gatherings (majalis) were exclusively female; a man had to have a female relative carry his dream to the interpreter [p 160 to 161]. Education was oral, from male or female teachers; the Qur'an was the only book mentioned. Oral transmission blurred lines between scriptural Islam and folk practice: one teacher performed a funeral prayer with children to cure the evil eye [p 161 to 162].
Each family had its interpreter, often a grandmother; the best were known beyond their neighbourhood for "eloquence, wisdom, social respect, a commanding personality, devoutness," a store of proverbs and dream lore [p 162]. Boys who came with their mothers later let their own wives attend. Pay was rare; gifts and food were welcome [p 162].
Umm Muhammad recalls a 1939 session: coffee and dates, greetings, the dream told before all, the interpreter opening, "That is good. The result shall also be good." Dreams that were shameful were heard privately in the next room [p 163 to 164].
Figure 30. A dream gathering in 1939.
The gatherings built a female counter-power to the shaykh and teacher, gave women freedom of movement and a voice on male conduct. The balance of male hegemony in religious interpretation and female counter-hegemony in dream interpretation produced an "often unacknowledged holistic social construction" [p 166].
Generation B: Cassettes and Call Centres
Generation B saw oil (1966) as children and UAE independence (1971) as teenagers. Government schools spread literacy. Saudi scholars introduced qal Allah qal Rasuluh, teaching referenced to Qur'an and Sunna, spread by audiocassettes in a "secondary orality" from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s [p 166 to 167]. Women gained access to male religious discourse, but Generation A's knowledge was branded "popular" and deviant [p 167 to 168].
Saudi-run Islamic Guidance Centers opened in the late 1970s with phone lines that offered dream interpretation: faceless, generic, ignoring Ibn Sirin's demand for personal context [p 168]. Umm Ibrahim dreamt of a spider and its young in her bedroom corner. The phone shaykh said spiders are good, since one covered the Prophet's cave: give charity and pray. Umm Sa'id, a Generation A interpreter, who knew of her marital quarrels, read it as an early warning and advised peace with her husband; it worked [p 168 to 169]. What mattered to Generation B was relevance to their lives [p 169].
Figure 31. The family interpreter and the phone shaykh [p 168].
Still, the old gatherings declined: doubt about folk content, men phoning directly, families moving to the suburbs, impersonal service and the prestige of scriptural readings [p 169 to 170].
Figure 32. Why the old gatherings declined [p 169 to 170].
Generation C: TV, Books and Forums
Generation C, now in their thirties, live in anonymous towers in a city where they are a small minority; piety is more an individual choice [p 170 to 171]. The guidance centres closed after 9/11; the Awqaf phone service is little used [p 171 to 172]. Three sources dominate: dream books at home, the Ru'ya show on Nur Dubai TV and web forums [p 172]. Two brothers explain they first ask their sister, who owns dream books; only hard cases go further [p 172].
On TV, Wasim Yusuf, a young Jordanian Salafi shaykh, aims to reintroduce "the medieval Islamic tradition of dream interpretation based on qal Allah qal Rasuluh," backed by fatwas from students of al-Albani and Ibn Baz. Of more than 2,000 calls per show, about 45 are answered [p 172 to 173]. A woman who dreamt of watching surfers in stormy waves from a dam was told the dam is a barrier keeping her from "the people of leisure" [p 173]. Forums, mostly written by women, offer several readings and creative alternatives to the TV show [p 173 to 174].
| Generation A | Generation B | Generation C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Era | Pearling, 1930s | Oil and independence | Westernised multimedia city |
| Medium | Oral, face to face | Cassettes, telephone | Books, TV, Internet |
| Interpreter | Grandmothers and famed women | Saudi shaykhs on phone lines, plus old interpreters | Sisters with books, a male TV shaykh, women's forums |
| Basis | Proverbs, folk lore, personal context | Referenced Qur'an and Sunna | Mixed: books, TV, forums |
| Gender balance | Female counter-power | Male superstructure rises | Male public face; women callers and forum writers |
Table 10. Three generations of dream interpretation in Dubai [p 160 to 175].
Conclusion
The vast majority of TV callers are women, often phoning for male relatives who are shy to submit dreams: a paradox that reconfirms female dominance while the shaykh uses dreams to teach doctrine [p 174 to 175]. Forums may restore women's lead and independence from religious authority [p 175]. Drawing on Gramsci and Foucault, alZekri shifts focus from dream content to context and power: a Salafi reading conveys a Salafi worldview; a family member's conveys a family outlook. The coming challenge is not to link a dream to texts but "to make sense out of them in a personal, family, and community context on the basis of faith" [p 175 to 176].
Key takeaways
- Dream interpretation was a female institution with real moral power.
- Literacy and referenced teaching moved authority to male scholars.
- People value personal relevance over scriptural citation.
- New media both centralise and reopen interpretive authority.
Chapter 9. Dreams and Their Interpretation in Sufi Thought and Practice
Jonathan Katz opens Part II with a survey of Sufi dream theory and its social uses. Where popular dream manuals aim to predict the future, the Sufi asks what a dream reveals about his present spiritual state; and the most private of experiences becomes, paradoxically, a public advertisement of sanctity [p 183 to 184].
Dream Cultures
A Jesuit, Jean de Brébeuf, wrote in 1636 that the Huron "have a faith in dreams which surpasses all belief," treating them as "irrevocable decrees" and occasions for public feasts [p 181]. Dreaming is universal; interpretation is cultural [p 181]. Like the Huron, Sufi saints obeyed their dreams, but Muslims, like Hellenistic interpreters, were preoccupied with whether a dream was true and therefore actionable [p 182].
Figure 33. Dreaming is universal; interpretation is cultural.
For the friends of God, dreams are inspiration (ilham), distinct from prophetic revelation yet "a continuation in a minor key" of it [p 183]. Popular manuals by pseudo-Ibn Sirin, Ibn Shahin and Nabulusi divine the future; Sufis focus on their hal. Both assume dreams carry knowledge from the unseen and both read symbols by verbal association [p 184]. Dreams are, in Eric Ormsby's phrase, the "poor man's prophecy" [p 184]. Kharkushi's (d. ca. 406/1015) attempt to fuse Artemidorus with Sufi dream narratives had no successors; Nabulusi's great dream encyclopedia barely shows its author [p 184 to 185].
Dreams in Sufi Autobiography
Dreams frame Sufi autobiography. Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. ca. 905 to 910) reports his own dreams and his wife's, in which Muhammad and Jesus confirm his high rank among saints [p 185]. Dreams can replace investiture by a living master; Uwaysi Sufis are initiated by Khidr in a vision [p 185]. Ruzbihan Baqli's visions draw on kingship and scenery: he drinks an ocean; later hagiographers cut his most extraordinary visions to protect his reputation [p 185 to 186]. Reporting a dream works like performing a miracle; manuals place visions right after miracles, and some masters warned against both as distractions [p 186].
Figure 34. Dreams in Sufi lives.
Sleep itself was suspect, since Sufis prized wakeful remembrance. 'Attar tells of Shah Shuja' of Kirman, who fought sleep all his life, finally dreamed of God, and then carried a pillow hoping to repeat it [p 186].
Where Dreams Come From
Ghazali explained that the soul at rest, freed from the senses, receives images from the Preserved Tablet, reflected in the mirror of the heart; the clearer the soul, the less a dream needs interpretation. Sufis also have waking visions of prophets and angels [p 187]. Ibn 'Arabi goes further: dreams give the imagination access to the imaginal world, the barzakh of incorporeal archetypes, a language owed partly to Suhrawardi (d. 1191), who placed visions in a world "Possessing form but not substance." Ibn 'Arabi said the Fusus al-hikam was given to him in a vision by the Prophet [p 187 to 188].
Figure 35. Ghazali: the clearer the soul, the less a dream needs interpreting.
| Category ('Izz al-Din Kashani) | Nature | Needs interpretation? |
|---|---|---|
| Pure unveiling | True event | No |
| Imaginative unveiling | Symbolic, the lower soul interfering with the spirit | Yes |
| Pure imagination | False, wholly from the lower soul | Worthless |
| Mukashafa | Unveiling while still present to the senses | No; no deception possible |
Table 11. Kashani's fourteenth-century classification of visionary episodes (waqi'at) [p 188].
For Ruzbihan, unveiling is "not cognitive but apparitional," a vision clothed in human form [p 188]. Sarraj (d. 988) allowed three unveilings but cautioned that Muhammad's vision (Q. 53:11) is a solitary exception to God's invisibility to the living [p 188 to 189]. Sanusi (d. 1276/1859) summarised the Khalwati and Kubrawi view: dreams are symbolic, but unveiling follows a precise ladder of seven stages of coloured lights ending in colourless light [p 189].
Seeing the Prophet and the Dead
Sufis avoided ahlam, the "muddled" dreams of Joseph's story, preferring ru'ya, "vision," and the verb "I saw" [p 189]. They distinguished the eye's sight from the inner eye of discernment [p 189 to 190]. Visions of the Prophet were taken as literal and true, as were visits from dead shaykhs, who bestowed robes and confirmed status. Abu 'l-'Abbas al-Mursi said a sincere student benefits more from his teacher after the teacher's death [p 190]. Shrines are often "the concrete residue of earlier visionary experiences," echoing ancient incubation [p 190].
Figure 36. The two words for dreams that Sufis distinguished [p 189].
Dreams as Moral Monitors
Sha'rani recorded hundreds of dreams. Skipping night prayers, he dreamt of returning to his village, meaning his station had slipped back; slandering someone in a mosque, he dreamt of drinking wine or eating human flesh there. Unlike ordinary interpreters, he accepted dreams from the day's residues, shifting dreams from prediction to monitoring interior states [p 190 to 191]. Dabbagh of Fez, in the Ibriz, treated dreams as a spiritual barometer of darkness and light, dependent also on whether the dreamer is urban or desert, rich or poor, grocer or artisan [p 191 to 192]. In practice, interpretation was intuitive, one more display of the shaykh's clairvoyance that confirmed his superiority [p 192].
Visions and Authority
Muhammad al-Zawawi published 109 dream conversations with the Prophet in his lifetime. From the fifteenth century, intimacy with the Prophet became a near requirement for sainthood in North Africa, and founders like Ahmad al-Tijani, "seal of the Muhammadan sainthood," bypassed long initiatory chains through waking visions [p 192 to 193]. Sanusi offered communion with the Prophet to all followers; Marsafi (d. 970/1562) had already written instructions for producing a vision [p 193]. Salvation spread by sight: whoever saw the Prophet, then whoever saw the saint "unto the seventh," and finally, in Ibn Nasir's dream, "unto the twentieth" [p 193].
Conclusion
E. R. Dodds linked "dream pattern" and "culture pattern." Greek philosophy rationalised dreams in a way that stressed the individual; Sufi theory moved the other way, placing the dream at the heart of communal religious experience [p 194]. The question remains whether reliance on dreams shows certainty, or an anxiety only dreams could ease [p 195].
Key takeaways
- Sufi dream reading diagnoses the present state, not the future.
- Theories from Ghazali to Ibn 'Arabi grounded dreams in a single reality.
- Visions of the Prophet built authority and even promised salvation.
- Interpretation reinforced the shaykh's rank over the disciple.
Chapter 10. Behind the Veil of the Unseen: Classical Sufi Oneirology
Erik Ohlander surveys Sufi texts from the fourth/tenth to the early eighth/fourteenth century and finds a foundational dream theory built on three markers: dreams communicate hidden knowledge, they serve practical wayfaring, and they are evidence of status, above all the claim that Sufis are the true "heirs to the prophets" [p 200, 206 to 207].
Starting Point and Method
E. B. Tylor located the origin of religion in two universal experiences, death and dreams. His evolutionary scheme is a "quaint 'survival'," but his pairing of death and dreams remains a fruitful leitmotif [p 199]. Ohlander probed a fixed body of theoretical and hagiographic Sufi texts for explicit references to dreams; most references appear in hagiography, though theory grows more prominent late in the period [p 200 to 201]. By "dreams" he means things seen in sleep (manamat), not waking visions [p 201].
Figure 37. Ohlander's three markers of Sufi dream discourse.
Marker 1: Dreams Communicate
Dreams disclose knowledge not available when awake: predictive or confirmatory, admonishing or praising, plain or symbolic. Following a hadith, true God-sent visions (ru'ya) are distinguished from false dreams (hulm), satanic or psychological, much as Artemidorus divided the personal dream from the god-given one [p 201 to 202]. In hagiography, dream events cluster where a member's status in the Sufi community is in doubt, and usually feature a dead master or the Prophet [p 202].
Figure 38. True and false dreams, following a hadith.
God appears in dreams rarely compared with human figures [p 203]. Such "legitimizing-edifying" dreams resemble the hadith-like dream tales that Kinberg found in rivalries between the legal schools [p 203]. The dead often speak from the barzakh, the isthmus where souls await the Resurrection, or from Paradise [p 203].
Marker 2: Dreams Are Practical
Dreams also bear on practice. The master's interpretation of disciples' dreams, better attested later, shows the growing structure of the master-disciple bond; the early Kubrawis, such as Najm al-Din Razi Daya (d. 654/1256), discuss "dreams and visions" confidently [p 203 to 204]. The prayer of guidance (istikhara), two prayer units and a supplication before sleep, hoping for an answer "in a dream," was enjoined by Abu Hafs 'Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 632/1234) before any journey, and even for the decision whether to marry [p 204 to 205].
Marker 3: Dreams Are Evidence
Qushayri said sleep gives access to realities hidden in waking [p 205]. Baydawi distinguished a messenger, who receives revelation through an angel, from a prophet, who may receive it through dreams [p 205]. The hadith "The veridical dream-vision is 1/46th a part of prophethood" anchors the argument. 'Izz al-Din Kashani (d. 735/1334 to 35) wrote that "Everything ascribed to the prophets by way of revelatory inspiration (vahy) is also ascribed to God's friends (avliya') by way of divine inspirations" [p 205 to 206].
Figure 39. Ohlander's three markers of classical Sufi dream discourse [p 200, 206 to 207].
Conclusion
The three markers rest on a social vision and metaphysics peculiar to classical Sufism: an epistemic function, a practical function and a claim to post-prophetic heirship for the whole community [p 206 to 207]. Against Tylor, the discourse works as a "structuring structure" that gives the path meaning and grounds communal identity. Dreams here define, explain and empower; they are real, public and powerful. Shah b. Shuja' al-Kirmani, after seeing God in a dream, wrote that he had come to love sleep and slumber [p 207].
Key takeaways
- Classical Sufis treated dreams as a channel of hidden knowledge.
- Dreams guided practical decisions on the path.
- Dreams underwrote the Sufi claim to inherit prophecy.
- Hagiographic dream tales police rank within the community.
Chapter 11. Witnessing the Lights: Shams al-Din al-Daylami
Elizabeth Alexandrin examines two unedited works of the twelfth-century Sufi Shams al-Din al-Daylami: his Qur'an commentary and a short treatise on visions of time and space. Her finding: Daylami builds a visionary cosmology in which the Qur'an is the touchstone for verifying dreams and visions, and in which only the "possessors of hearts" see with the inner eye [p 216, 226].
Framing the Question
How does a human "bound to the prison of body, come to know the divine"? Kruger's study of medieval Christian dream literature shows dream manuals multiplying in the vernacular; Christian and Muslim authors alike asked whether a dream came from a heavy supper, a demon, or a purified soul [p 215 to 216]. Daylami negotiates among theology, philosophy and mysticism, setting up parallel "twins" of the inner world of man and the upper world of the unseen [p 216].
The Author and His Texts
Biographical facts are scarce: he appears mainly as mentor of Mahmud al-Din al-Ushnuhi in later hagiographies tracing the "pre-origins" of the Kubrawi, Naqshbandi and Kazaruni orders [p 217]. He cites classical Sufis such as Ibn 'Ata', Tustari, Hallaj and Junayd, and knew the Hebrew Bible [p 217 to 218]. Following Böwering, the collective manuscript appears to be a late revision, around 589/1193, reflecting a shift away from philosophy toward Sufism; he even retitled a work by divine inspiration [p 218]. He began the Jawahir al-asrar only after a Qur'an omen, rain and a voice in the night telling him to rise and strive [p 219].
The Inner Eye
The heart is the locus of both revelation and vision: "the niche of the soul holds the lamp of the spirit," enshrined in the heart "like a glittering star" [p 219 to 220]. Prophets and friends of God may see God through a faculty that is neither the senses nor the intellect [p 220]. Daylami wrote his commentary to show that Sufi accounts of mystical states are sound, having found in them states like his own: visions of the lights of the heavenly dominion where pre-eternity merged with post-eternity [p 220]. When Satan threw him into doubt, he opened the Qur'an at Ya Sin [p 220 to 221].
He separates the carnal soul (nafs) from spirit (ruh) and the "spiritual spirit," which is the secret, a subtle centre. The soul's commanding, reproaching and peaceful stages are states of one soul with a bodily and a subtle aspect [p 221]. His view echoes Tustari's picture of souls as atoms of light witnessing the primordial covenant [p 222].
Figure 40. Daylami's levels of the self.
Dreams versus Exalted Visions
The treatise's diagram is "the form unveiled to me in the world of reality . . . several times in my heart," named "the form of encountering face to face" [p 222]. Daylami distinguishes common people, who see something like a dream through the outward senses, from the possessors of hearts, who perceive inwardly [p 222 to 223].
| Group | Mode of perception | Access to the Qur'an |
|---|---|---|
| Common people | Dream-like vision in sleep via outward senses | Outward meaning |
| Servants of God | Inspiration equated with apparent meaning | Outward meaning of verses |
| Gnostics, possessors of hearts | Inner senses in the heart's subtle centre | Esoteric meaning (ta'wil); "firmly rooted in knowledge" |
| The Prophet | Saw God on the Night of Ascension with physical eyes | Unique |
Table 12. Daylami's hierarchy of seeing [p 223 to 225].
Of his reading of the Light Verse (Q. 24:35) he says: "I learned this commentary from My Lord in the world of 'light upon light'" [p 223]. He saw Sura Ya Sin within himself, and "three lights ascended from the three verses," drawn in manuscripts as "the form of the light of Ya Sin," tied to the hadith that Ya Sin is the heart of the Qur'an [p 224].
Figure 41. Daylami's parallel cosmology of the inner person and the unseen world, simplified [p 216, 223 to 225].
Seeing God in Sleep
Against scholars who said God cannot be seen in a dream, Daylami argues that dreams already show impossible images, so dream vision works by means other than the physical eye. Seeing God before death is possible through "the eye of the secret and the light of faith," a privilege God gives whom he wills; only the Sufis, he says, accept this, against Mu'tazilis, Ash'aris and Hanbalis [p 224 to 225]. Since the intellect does not work in sleep, visions do not come from intellect [p 225]. Sufi visions are not "false imaginings" unless the senses are diseased; madness may be angelic or demonic, and Sufi masters, not physicians, cure it [p 225]. A spiritual being changing form in a dream is no proof of imagination: Gabriel appeared as Dihya al-Kalbi [p 226]. Like the voice from the tree at Sinai, God may speak to servants by allusion in their inmost perception [p 226].
Chapter 12. Narrating Sight: Dreaming as Visual Training
Shahzad Bashir insists that we never study dreams, only narratives about them. Reading the Naqshbandi hagiography Rashahat-i 'ayn al-hayat, he argues that dream stories are prescriptions for cultivating sight: seeing "is not a passive activity" but one that "needs to be cultivated through deliberate practice," and its aim is to bind disciples to masters [p 233 to 235, 246].
Living Masters and Disciples
'Ala' al-Din Abizi (d. 1487), sent home by his master Sa'd al-Din Kashghari (d. 1456) to marry, kept an inner connection for eight years. Harassed by an official, he appealed inwardly; he dreamt the master shot an arrow at the man, who scorned his warning and three days later was half paralysed [p 236 to 237]. Projecting oneself into another's dream is the master's prerogative; the disciple got "televisual" access to an act in advance. The lesson: one needs a master as protector in worldly matters too [p 237].
Figure 43. Abizi's dream: the master as protector in worldly matters [p 236 to 237].
Ahrar once asked how to interpret a dream that God had died. Three answers: the dreamer's devotion to the law is corrupted; a great nearness to God has left him; or, per Jami, a worldly passion he had made his god has died. A dream cannot be interpreted in the abstract; it depends on the dreamer's state [p 238 to 239].
Figure 44. Three readings of a dream that God had died.
The Dead and the Prophets
Dreams link generations: Baha' al-Din Naqshband (d. 1389) received initiation through a dream of 'Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduvani (d. ca. 1217) [p 239]. After 'Abd al-Ghafur Lari (d. 1506) died, a disciple asked him in a dream about the "unity of being"; Lari said Ibn 'Arabi had told him everything needed was in his books. Seen ill in another dream, Lari taught that illness cleanses the mind to perceive light. What happens in dreams is "the continuation of the relationship as it existed before the master's demise" [p 240].
Figure 45. Dreams link generations.
Dreams also merge past and present elect. A companion saw the prophet Moses and found him to be the living preacher Sayyid 'Ashiq. Lutfullah Khuttalani, who had seen the Prophet as a beautiful person in childhood, later saw Ahrar take on that same form: "seeing that form became the cause of my bondage to His Eminence" [p 240 to 241]. Ruji, after reciting prayers with his mother, dreamt she presented him to the Prophet as the promised child; a scribe wrote him a witnessed document. His mother had dreamt the same scene from her own vantage point [p 241 to 242].
| Dream type | Example | Function for the master |
|---|---|---|
| Living master and disciple | Kashghari's arrow; Ruji's closed eyes | Protection; revealing hidden rank [p 236 to 238] |
| The dead | Naqshband initiated by Ghijduvani; Lari after death | Linking generations; continuing the bond [p 239 to 240] |
| Masters and prophets | Moses as Sayyid 'Ashiq; Ahrar in the Prophet's form; Ruji's document | Parity with prophets; certified status [p 240 to 242] |
Table 13. Bashir's three groups of dreams in the Rashahat [p 236 to 242].
Cultivating Vision: the Bond
"Seeing" has no fixed meaning; what joins the dreams is the master's authority [p 242 to 243]. The Naqshbandi practice of rabita ("bond") had the disciple imagine the master's form until the image gave off bodily heat and was imprinted on the heart, alongside the dhikr "there is no god but God." The image's origin, dream or sight, mattered less than its settling in the heart [p 243].
Figure 46. The Naqshbandi practice of the bond as Bashir describes it [p 243, 245 to 246].
Dreams could also be ruled out. When told that the rival Zayn al-Din Khwafi (d. 1435) interpreted many dreams, Ya'qub Charkhi (d. 1447) recited: "I am neither night nor a night-worshipper, to relate things about sleep" [p 244].
Conclusion: Love Through Sight
Everything attributed to dreams in these stories is also attributed to waking experience, so dreaming is not a privileged consciousness [p 244]. After death, Lari explained, the beauty of the spiritual world does not decay, so love there is constant; worldly beauty, made of opposed elements, fades [p 245]. Hence, citing Nizam al-Din Khamush, "A shaykh is one who can make himself appear beautiful in the sight of disciples," which is why combing the beard and tying the turban well became custom [p 245 to 246]. Physical meetings, dreams, trances and imprinting the master's image form one paradigm of visual training [p 246].
Key takeaways
- Study dream narratives as texts with an authorial agenda.
- Dreams flow from master to disciple, never the reverse.
- Meaning depends on the dreamer's state, not the image.
- Dreams belong to a continuum of cultivated seeing aimed at love of the master.
Chapter 13. (Re)creating Image and Identity: Murad III's Dreams
Özgen Felek reads the Kitabü'l-menamat, the Ottoman sultan Murad III's dream letters to his Sufi master, as an exercise in self-fashioning. Against chroniclers who saw him failing the script of a warrior sultan, Murad used his dreams to craft an image of himself as Sufi pole, heir of the Prophet and awaited unifier of Islam [p 250, 266 to 267].
Image Then and Now
Andre Agassi's "Image is everything!" names a modern fixation, but Stephen Greenblatt found "increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity" in sixteenth-century England [p 249]. Muslim rulers showed the same: Babur's memoir, Shah Tahmasp's autobiographical Tazkira, and Murad's Book of Dreams, compiled after the first Islamic millennium [p 250]. Felek knows of no prior study of dreams as self-fashioning [p 250].
The Sultan and His Shaykh
Murad (r. 982 to 1003/1574 to 1595), born in 1546, was twenty-eight at accession [p 251]. Just before it, a poor gardener-dervish, Shuja', interpreted his dream as foretelling his father's death and his own enthronement; it came true within days, and Shuja' Dede became the sultan's spiritual adviser with a salary [p 251]. A Halveti, illiterate, praised by some and called a charlatan by a contemporary, he guided Murad until his death in 996/1587 to 1588 [p 251]. The relationship ran almost entirely by letter, over two thousand, with only one face-to-face meeting mentioned [p 252]. Nuh Agha, Master of the Horse, compiled a gilded 259-folio copy in 1001/1591 to 1592, addressed to Sufi seekers, which suggests an eye to posterity [p 251 to 252].
Figure 47. A gardener-dervish becomes the sultan's shaykh.
The Script of Sultanhood
The ideal sultan, shaped by chroniclers, storytellers and painters, was a brave holy warrior, hunter, pious, just and generous [p 252 to 253]. Murad departed from it: he stopped leading campaigns, withdrew to the palace with dwarves and buffoons, was called impotent and then a sex addict, and Mustafa 'Ali faulted his cult-like submission to Shuja' [p 253]. His preferred image was painted by his court historian, court painter and Nuh Agha [p 253].
Figure 48. The script of sultanhood and Murad's departure from it [p 252 to 253].
Two Murads
Murad the Sufi
The book becomes in effect a hagiography: from a divinely chosen first meeting, Murad rises to Pole of Poles [p 256]. Halveti masters read disciples' dreams to judge their stage, including colours [p 257]. Using the dream manual of Kurd Muhammed Efendi, a reader can trace Murad through the seven stages of the soul, though Felek stresses that signs overlap and need expert interpretation [p 257 to 259].
| Stage of the soul | Signs in the manual | In Murad's dreams |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Commanding (emmare) | Animals; blue | Rare; elephants and camels only show him speaking with animals like Solomon |
| 2. Reproaching (levvame) | Horses, camels, houses, ships; yellow | Brief: few houses and ships |
| 3. Inspired (mülhime) | Arabs, women, gardens; red | Arab motif, gardens, walking on water, flying |
| 4. Satisfied (mutma'inne) | Prophets, sultans, Ka'ba, Jerusalem, books, Qur'an | Most common motifs |
| 5. Consenting (raziyye) | Angelic level; green | Walking on water, flying |
| 6. Consent-given (marziyye) | Skies, sun, fire, candles; white for Halvetis | A flame from him around a horse; fire at the Ka'ba |
| 7. Purified (safiyye) | Rain, snow, black and white seas, colourless light | All present |
Table 14. Murad's dream motifs mapped onto the Halveti seven stages of the soul [p 257 to 259].
By his deeds he passes through three ranks: disciple, held tightly by Shuja' in ecstasy; successor, instructing his sisters in dhikr and warning them to bring their dreams to him alone; and Pole of Poles [p 260 to 261]. In one dream the reigning Pole embraces him; Murad drinks three drops of his sweat and is told, "Both keep your sultanate and be the Pole of Poles" [p 261]. Dhu'l-Nun prostrates at his feet; he receives God-given knowledge [p 261]. A call even says "You are His Messenger," but an inspiration clarifies: all given to prophets and saints "except for the office of the prophethood . . . and messengerhood," which are sealed. Read through Ibn 'Arabi, this claims heirship, identifying him with the Muhammadan light [p 261 to 262]. Finally: "I am He. You are He," the oneness of being [p 262].
Figure 49. Murad's three ranks.
Murad the Sovereign of Islam
The dream Murad is "Sovereign of Islam," never named Mahdi but given messianic signs [p 263]. Taking the throne seventeen or eighteen years before the millennium, amid apocalyptic expectation, he dreamt of a book of letters giving the time left and of sailing to Jerusalem, as the Mahdi's men will in a hadith [p 263]. Since the Mahdi must descend from the Prophet, the dreams supply a spiritual descent: the Prophet's mantle, amulet, scimitar and Qur'an, "the inheritor of the knowledge of the Prophet," then transformation into the Prophet and into 'Ali, uniting Sunni and Shi'i claims. A letter says the Ottoman caliphs will be twelve; "The twelfth is . . . you" [p 263 to 264].
Rival rulers made similar claims: Shah Isma'il as Mahdi, Tahmasp and 'Abbas I as Shadow of God, Akbar as Pole and Perfect Man [p 266].
Conclusion
Murad's dreams present a divinely ordained sultan who becomes Khidr, Muhammad and 'Ali, uniting all Muslims at the perceived end of time [p 266 to 267]. Whether he had the dreams cannot be known, but who would dare say the sultan had not? Yet the Prophet called the worst lie claiming "to have seen a dream which he has not seen" [p 267].
Key takeaways
- Early modern rulers fashioned images deliberately, and dreams were a tool.
- The humble narrator and the exalted protagonist are two constructed selves.
- Sufi stage-maps let audiences read spiritual rank from dream motifs.
- Dream claims fed messianic politics and war decisions.
Chapter 14. The Visionaries of a Tariqa: The Uwaysis of Shahjahanabad
Meenakshi Khanna studies Sayyid Hasan "Rasulnuma," "One who shows the way to the Prophet," a seventeenth-century Delhi Sufi with no earthly master. In an age of initiatic chains, his authority rested on visions of the Prophet and on his power to induce such visions in disciples: the vision of the preceptor, not genealogy, became the source of legitimacy [p 274, 292].
Two Kinds of Authority
The chapter opens with Sayyid Hasan, in disguise, asking the great hadith scholar 'Abd al-Haqq Muhaddith Dihlawi (1551 to 1642) to verify, about "a person" who often saw the Prophet, whether such visions were real. 'Abd al-Haqq answered that if the seer is confident it is the Prophet, or the apparition claims to be, then "undoubtedly the vision is of the Prophet. There is no interference of the Devil in this matter" [p 273]. The scene sets two models side by side: 'Abd al-Haqq's authority through the silsila, and Sayyid Hasan's direct link to the Prophet through the Uwaysi method, named after Uways al-Qarani, the Yemeni who never met the Prophet yet communicated with him [p 274].
Figure 50. Two kinds of authority.
| Feature | Silsila model | Sayyid Hasan's Uwaysi model |
|---|---|---|
| Source of authority | Unbroken chain of masters back to the Prophet | One link: direct visions of the Prophet |
| Initiation | From a living shaykh, with rituals | From the invisible world in visions |
| Inducing visions of the Prophet | 'Abd al-Haqq: dhikr, prayers, picturing his form or grave, invoking the Muhammadan reality; open to any Muslim | The master's focused attention (tawajjuh) and presence (suhbat); bestowed at his will |
| Succession | Written certificate with genealogical tree | Dreams of investiture; in practice hereditary |
Table 15. Two patterns of Sufi authority in seventeenth-century north India [p 274 to 275, 287, 291].
The Source and the Man
Historians have favoured silsilas with tangible institutions; Uwaysis, assumed transhistorical, are marginalised [p 275 to 276]. The Malfuzat of Sayyid Hasan was written by Mir Sayyid Hashim Sirhindi in 1104/1693; it models its subject on Uways, calling him "the Second Uways" [p 276]. From a notable family of Narnaul, cheated of his post at eighteen, he studied fourteen years in Jaunpur, returned a mystic devoted to the Prophet, and, on the Prophet's instruction in a dream, moved to the new capital Shahjahanabad, living there nearly fifty years until his death on 22 Sha'ban 1103/9 May 1692 [p 276]. Disciples ranged from Naqshbandi Afghans to court notables and mendicants, coming above all to see the Prophet; he moved about the city disguised as a cloth broker [p 277]. What set him apart was his ability to "show" the Prophet to whomever he wished [p 277].
Dreams as Pedagogy
Sirhindi groups visions in chapters on unveilings, miracles and perfections. Normally a saint hides miracles, but a shaykh appointed to teach must relate them to build faith [p 278]. Dreams appear under both dreamer and dreamed, showing they have "an objective existence" [p 279]. In one vision Sayyid Hasan stands before God with the pre-Islamic prophets on his right and Muhammad on his left, the side of the heart, whose gaze teaches him: prophecy is sealed, yet guidance continues through dreams [p 279 to 280]. The Prophet told him in a dream, "You will become Uways Qarani" [p 280].
Figure 51. Where Sirhindi groups the visions.
He scorned the shaykhs of his age as pretenders and recommended discipleship of the Prophet himself [p 281]. He discouraged would-be disciples, prescribed gradual discipline, less food, sleep, speech and dress, study of Islamic sciences over philosophy, yet demanded total submission, including disclosure of offensive thoughts [p 281].
Later, while Ilah Yar wondered how to picture the Prophet, the shaykh said "Behold!" and in waking he saw the Prophet's two beautiful eyes [p 284].
When Sirhindi himself doubted his master, he dreamt a man distributing dust from the Prophet's shoes refused him: "There has been a feebleness in your belief." A fellow disciple, Jamal Khan, told of a vision in which the shaykh held the light of faith in his fist, letting it enter or leave his heart; the Prophet said it stays only if the shaykh wills [p 284 to 286]. Doubting the shaykh closes access to the Prophet [p 286].
After his death, a disciple dreamt the shaykh pointing to the sky, "I am going," and placing his hat on the disciple's head, a dream of succession; in practice his son took over, as hereditary succession was common by then [p 286 to 287].
The Scholarly Frame
Around the millennium, bold claims abounded; 'Abd al-Haqq rejected Ahmad Sirhindi's and championed the Prophet's primacy and hadith learning [p 288]. His commentary on the Mishkat holds that true dreams are part of prophecy, that the Prophet's words in a dream count as sound hadith, and that Satan cannot imitate him [p 288 to 289]. Following Ghazali, the dreamer sees not the body but a symbolic form of the Prophet's formless essence, mirrored by the state of the heart: a beautiful form shows firm faith, an angry one weak faith, so visions of the Prophet diagnose one's spiritual state [p 289 to 290]. The Malfuzat treats narrators of the shaykh's dreams as reliable as hadith transmitters [p 290].
Conclusion
'Attar first named Uwaysis as those needing no living master; Jami extended this to guidance by dead saints; by the seventeenth century, Uwaysis could receive instruction from a living shaykh through his attention [p 291]. Sayyid Hasan's experience matched Uways's, and by sharing his link with disciples he widened the Uwaysi style. His tariqa depended on one founder's charisma, positioned as "the second Uways" at the start of Islam's new millennium, with the Prophet as the indispensable guide [p 292].
Key takeaways
- Visions could replace genealogy as the basis of Sufi authority.
- The master who could show the Prophet controlled access to blessing.
- Doubt of the master was policed through dreams.
- Hadith scholarship supplied the theory that legitimised the visions.
Synthesis
Read together, the fourteen studies form one argument: the dream is the most democratic channel to the unseen in Islam, and for that very reason every community worked hard to regulate it. This section gathers the takeaways, the analytic frameworks, a critical assessment, the people who matter, and links to present-day work.
Twenty-Two Takeaways
- True dreams are "a part of prophecy" that survives the end of revelation, which gives every believer a potential share in sacred knowledge [p 2, 288].
- Dreams in the Sira authorise beginnings: the Prophet's ancestry, mission and community are framed by dreams of kin, women and even non-Muslims [p 15 to 28].
- The message dream in which a figure appears and speaks is the most trusted type across the volume [p 15 to 28].
- Sobriety did not exclude dreaming: Hanbali dictionaries are full of dreams that certify scholars after death [p 31 to 46].
- Dreams of the dead report on the afterlife and so settle reputations among the living [p 31 to 46].
- The Hidden Imam is met in visions, not in claims of representation, a compromise that allowed contact without challenging clerical authority [p 51 to 67].
- A dream can transmit a craft: the Herat poet Fasihi presents poetic skill as a gift received in a dream initiation [p 77 to 92].
- Ottoman chroniclers used dreams to explain history, from the dynasty's founding dream to the fall of 'Osman II [p 99 to 117].
- Reformers did not reject dreams; they ranked them: the Deobandis kept dreams but subordinated them to the shari'a [p 123 to 136].
- The truth of a dream tracks the faith of the dreamer, the share of prophecy in a dream shrinking as piety weakens [p 123 to 136, 289 to 290].
- Online dream forums keep classical rules while letting anonymous users interpret one another, a new form of authority [p 139 to 152].
- Interpretation in Dubai shifted from grandmothers to media shaykhs across three generations, narrowing popular voice [p 159 to 176].
- Sufis read dreams as states of the soul, not only as predictions; the dream diagnoses where the seeker stands [p 181 to 195].
- Classical Sufi theory has recurring markers: dreams placed in a hierarchy of knowing, linked to the soul's purity, and tested by a master [p 199 to 207].
- Daylami verified visions against the Qur'an, making scripture the final test of unveiling [p 215 to 228].
- Persian hagiography trains the reader's eyes: dream stories teach disciples to see the master inwardly [p 233 to 246].
- The master-disciple bond is itself visualised, the disciple holding the master's image in mind [p 233 to 246].
- A sultan could write his own dream record: Murad III sent his dreams to his shaykh, fashioning himself as a mystic ruler [p 249 to 267].
- Dreams could replace genealogy: Sayyid Hasan's Uwaysi authority rested on visions of the Prophet [p 273 to 292].
- Control of access to visions is control of a community; the master who shows the Prophet holds the key [p 277, 286].
- Narrating a dream already interprets it; every written dream is shaped by the genre and the teller's purpose [p 4, 8].
- The study of dreams is the study of authority: who dreams, who decides, and what a dream may license [p 3 to 4].
Frameworks Table
| Framework | Chapter | What it explains |
|---|---|---|
| Message dream frame (setting, figure, message, waking) | 1 | How Sira dreams carry authority |
| Hanbali dream typology | 2 | Kinds of dreams that certify scholars |
| Type and antitype | 3 | The Imam's appearances patterned on earlier figures |
| Knowledge, craft and making | 4 | Dream as transmission of poetic skill |
| Motivation and annunciation dreams | 5 | How chronicles explain events |
| Deobandi dream types and fractions of prophecy | 6 | Ranking dreams under the shari'a |
| Three generations of interpreters | 8 | Shift of interpretive authority in Dubai |
| Kashani's categories of visionary events | 9 | Dreams as signs of states |
| Three markers of Sufi dream theory | 10 | Shared logic of classical texts |
| Daylami's hierarchy of visions | 11 | Grading and verifying unveilings |
| Four elements of hagiographic dreams; the bond (rabita) | 12 | Dreams as training in sight |
| Seven stages of the soul | 13 | Murad III's dreams as a spiritual path |
| Silsila versus Uwaysi authority | 14 | Vision as a substitute for genealogy |
Table 16. Analytic frameworks used across the volume.
Figure 52. The message dream frame of chapter 1, the first framework in the table.
Figure 53. Editor's synthesis: the chain from dream to authority, and the feedback by which authority regulates dreaming.
A closer look
Strengths. The volume's range is its main asset: it sets the Sira beside Dubai and Murad III beside Web forums, and the recurring pattern of dreams as authority emerges from evidence rather than assertion. Several chapters offer reusable tools, notably the typologies in Chapters 2, 6, 9 and 10.
Almost all evidence is narrated dreams, so the gap between experience and text, which the introduction acknowledges, remains wide [p 4]. Women appear mostly as dreamers in sources written by men, except in Chapter 8, where living women's voices are recorded. The Sufi half is weighted toward Persianate and Ottoman material, with little on North Africa or Southeast Asia.
Open questions. How did ordinary people use the manuals? Did dream claims ever fail publicly, and what happened then? The chapters on the Web and Dubai suggest that the next shift in dream authority is technological, a line of inquiry the book opens but does not close.
Who's Who
Dates are given only as printed in the book.
| Person | Dates | Role here |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Ishaq | d. ca. 150/767 | Author of the original Sira |
| Ibn Hisham | d. 213/828 or 218/833 | Editor of the Sira studied in Ch.1 |
| Ibn Hanbal | d. 241/855 | Eponym of the Hanbali school |
| Ibn Abi Ya'la | d. 527/1133 | Hanbali biographer |
| Ibn al-Jawzi | d. 597/1201 | Hanbali author |
| Ibn Rajab | d. 795/1392 | Hanbali biographer |
| Kulayni | d. ca. 329/941 | Shi'i hadith compiler |
| Majlisi | d. 1110/1698 | Safavid Shi'i scholar |
| Fasihi | d. 1049/1649 | Herat poet of Ch.4 |
| 'Osman I | d. 1324? | Founder in the Ottoman dynasty dream |
| 'Osman II | r. 1618 to 1622 | Sultan whose fall chroniclers explained |
| Katib Celebi | 1609 to 1657 | Ottoman historian |
| Evliya Celebi | 1611 to after 1683 | Ottoman traveller |
| Thanawi | d. 1943 | Deobandi scholar of Ch.6 |
| Hakim Tirmidhi | d. ca. 905 to 910 | Early Sufi theorist |
| Junayd | d. 298/910 | Baghdad Sufi master |
| Hujwiri | d. ca. 465/1072 | Author of a Persian Sufi manual |
| Ghazali | d. 1111 | Theologian; theory of seeing the Prophet |
| Ibn 'Arabi | 1165 to 1240 | Theorist of the imaginal world |
| Abu Hafs 'Umar al-Suhrawardi | d. 632/1234 | Author of a Sufi manual |
| Kashani | d. 735/1334 to 35 | Classifier of visionary events, Ch.9 |
| Baha' al-Din Naqshband | d. 1389 | Eponym of the Naqshbandiyya |
| Khwaja Ahrar | d. 1490 | Naqshbandi master of Ch.12 |
| Kashifi Safi | d. 1532 to 1533 | Hagiographer of Ahrar |
| Murad III | r. 1574 to 1595 | Sultan and dream letter writer, Ch.13 |
| Shuja' Dede | d. 996/1587 to 88 | Murad III's Halveti shaykh |
| 'Abd al-Haqq Muhaddith Dihlawi | 1551 to 1642 | Hadith scholar, Ch.14 |
| Sayyid Hasan Rasulnuma | d. 1103/1692 | Uwaysi master of Delhi |
| Marshall Hodgson | 1922 to 1968 | Modern historian cited in the volume |
Table 17. Who's Who, with dates as printed in the book.
Glossary
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| ru'ya | A true or veridical dream, often from God; contrasted with confused dreams |
| hulm, adghath ahlam | A dream from Satan or from the self |
| mubashshirat | Glad tidings; the part of prophecy said to remain after the Prophet |
| ta'bir | Dream interpretation, literally "crossing over" from image to meaning |
| message dream | A dream in which a figure appears and delivers a spoken message |
| istikhara | A prayer asking God for guidance, often answered in a dream |
| isnad | Chain of transmitters; applied to dream reports as to hadith |
| barzakh | Isthmus or intermediate world between worlds; also between sleep and waking |
| imaginal world | The world of images (alam al-mithal) where spirits take forms and visions occur |
| kashf | Unveiling; direct spiritual perception |
| waqi'a | A visionary event between sleep and waking, classified by Kashani |
| wahy, ilham | Revelation to prophets; inspiration to saints and believers |
| hal, maqam | A passing spiritual state; a stable station on the path |
| nafs | The lower self or soul, refined through stages on the Sufi path |
| wali, walaya | Friend of God, saint; sainthood |
| Qa'im, Hidden Imam | The twelfth Shi'i Imam in occultation, expected to return |
| ghayba | Occultation of the Imam |
| tariqa | A Sufi path or order |
| silsila | Initiatic chain linking a Sufi master back to the Prophet |
| murid, pir, shaykh | Disciple; master; master or elder |
| rabita | The bond of the disciple to the master, often by holding his image in mind |
| tawajjuh | The master's focused spiritual attention on a disciple |
| suhbat | Companionship; physical presence with the master |
| Uwaysi | One guided by an absent or dead master, after Uways al-Qarani |
| dhikr | Remembrance of God by repeated formulas |
| khalifa | Deputy or successor of a Sufi master |
| Mahdi, mujaddid | Messianic guide; renewer of religion at the turn of a century or millennium |
| Halveti | The Sufi order of Murad III's shaykh |
| Naqshbandi | Central Asian Sufi order of Ahrar and Sayyid Hasan's Afghan disciples |
| malfuzat | Recorded sayings and deeds of a Sufi master |
Table 19. Glossary of recurring terms.
About this book
Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies by Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh (eds.), 2012. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
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