Dreams, Visions, and Unseen Voices
Medieval Arabo-Islamic culture possessed a rich literature on dreams and their interpretation.[28] The early dream manuals of Ibn Sirīn (d. 728), Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 894), and Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) circulated widely for centuries; these were adapted and added to by many later writers. A twelfth-century biographical dictionary by al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Khallāl (d. 1127), The Generations ofDream Interpreters (Ṭabaqāt al-mu‘abbirīn), listed more than six hundred famous practitioners of the craft of dream interpretation.[29] The Old Testament, the Qur’ān,[30] the ḥadīth of the Prophet Muhammad,[31] as well as the neighboring cultures of Greece, Persia, and India, all provided extensive material for the development of Arabo-Islamic beliefs and practices concerning dreams and their interpretation. One Arabic autobiographer, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873 or 877), translated the dream manual of Artemidorus (second century C.E.) from Greek into Arabic in about 873. Ibn Sīnā, another autobiographer, wrote a dream interpretation treatise of his own.[32] The surviving thirteen-month fragment of the diary of Ibn al-Bannā’ (d. 1078) includes some twenty-five narratives of dreams seen by the author, his family and friends, for which he provides interpretations. Ibn Khaldūn, also an autobiographer, ranked dream interpretation among the sciences of Islamic religious law.[33] The erudition of Arabic writers in the matter of dream interpretation acquired such renown that by the tenth century a Byzantine author seeking to lend his Greek dream manual additional authority pretended to be an Arab writer, though his ignorance of Islamic religious practice and his detailed knowledge of orthodox Christian practice combine to reveal his true identity.[34]
Most early Arabic authorities state that a dream (manām) or vision (ru’yā) can originate either with God or with the Devil; some held that the Devil was capable of producing dreams only at night and that therefore dreams seen during the day were from God. (It should be noted that the language of these texts does not always allow us to determine whether the “dreams” or “visions” in question are experienced in the state of sleep or wakefulness.) In addition, a famous ḥadīth of the Prophet Muhammad states: “Whoever sees me in a dream has indeed seen me, for the Devil is incapable of assuming my form [man ra’ānī fī l-manām fa-qad ra’ānī laysa li-l-shayṭān ‘an yatamaththala ṣūratī].”[35] Thus visions of the person of the Prophet himself assumed a character separate from that of other dreams and came to play a major role in spiritual biography and autobiography.[36]
Almost all early sources recognize at least two categories of dreams: literal dreams, which require no extensive interpretation, and symbolic or allegorical dreams, which require specialized interpretation. Since the first category is taken to be self-evident, the majority of oneirocritical works deal exclusively with the latter category (Ibn Abī al-Dunyā being a notable exception). The most common type of treatise on dreams was the dream manual or dictionary, which listed instances of dreams and their interpretations or specific symbols and their meanings.[37] In accounts of literal dreams, the entry concerns how and when the event actually took place, and these dreams are often tied to specific persons; in accounts of allegorical dreams or symbols, the entry includes the interpretation or meaning, and most often no information is given concerning an actual occurrence of this dream. One additional category of dreams, sometimes subsumed under the category of literal dreams, is that of messages, often in the form of poems, that are delivered to the dreamer by figures such as angels, prophets, dead relatives, or former teachers. In these dreams the act of interpretation concerns only the text rather than any form of visual imagery. This category is in turn closely related to the concept of the “unseen caller” or “unseen voice” [hātif], which was common already in pre-Islamic poems and narratives.[38] In all of these categories, the most common functions for dreams (as portrayed in dream manuals) are either as portents of future events, in which case the act of interpretation is an attempt to decipher the event before it actually occurs, or as the affirmation or legitimization of an act or a person's status.[39]
The growing body of recent scholarship on Arabo-Islamic dream literature deals almost exclusively with the areas of dream theory and interpretation. The questions posed by the analysis of Arabic autobiographies, however, are somewhat different and center on dreams as they appear in a specific narrative context: How do Arabic autobiographers deploy dreams in their texts? When and why are they included? What do they represent, and what function do they serve?
A large number of the texts in the present corpus include dream narratives; indeed, in two cases (al-Tirmidhī and Abū Shāma) dream narrations occupy well over half the body of the text. Modern readers might be tempted to see the inclusion of dreams as a portrayal of the author's “inner experience” and even as a potential reflection of the author's innermost personality ripe for psychological interpretation. The textual evidence suggests otherwise. Arabic autobiographers most often do not include dreams as reflections of their personalities but rather as messages from outside themselves that act as portents of the future or as authoritative testimony affirming or legitimizing a particular action or an individual's status. The deployment of the dream thus betrays a moment of “anxiety” reflected not so much in the content and symbolism of the dream itself but rather at the point of its inclusion in the text. What assertion or action in the account does the author feel requires this supporting testimony? Interpretive theory of the period most often understood symbolic dreams to be related not to the personal life of the dreamer but to that area of life that was indeed filled with uncertainties—one's political, social, and financial status. In the medieval Arabic tradition dreams about sex, for example, were interpreted as being about political and social life. In modern western cultures one may have dreams about one's public life, but these are often interpreted as betraying anxieties about sex or other private matters, while in the Islamic Middle Ages if one had dreams about sex, they were thought to reveal insights about one's public life. The vast majority of the dreams found in this corpus of autobiographies, however, are of the literal type that require little or no symbolic interpretation.
The dream narrative that provides the dramatic high point of the account (translated in this volume) attributed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873 or 877) of his trials and tribulations is one such literal dream.[40] Ḥunayn, a physician and translator, recounts his experiences in the pattern of the biblical/Qur’ānic Joseph story. He, like Joseph, is wrongly accused and imprisoned. The ruler, in this case the caliph, is ailing and has a dream that eventually leads to Ḥunayn's release, the restoration of his possessions, and his elevation to a position of power. The dramatic moment comes not in the interpretation of the dream, as in the scriptural versions, but in the caliph's public narration of the dream before the court. In his dream he sees two figures who are identified as Jesus and Ḥunayn. Jesus tells the caliph that he must pardon Ḥunayn, who has been falsely accused, and should call him to his side and take whatever medication Ḥunayn prescribes. Although the dream requires no interpretation, it is critical to the narrative as a whole, as it provides the only motivation for Ḥunayn's release and restoration to favor.
Al-Simnānī (d. 1336) (text translated in this volume) lived a sumptuous life in his youth as an intimate companion in the court of Sultan Arghūn in northeastern Iran. At the age of twenty-four, just at the moment of charging into battle, he heard a “rebuking voice” and saw a vision of the Hereafter. The experience left him gravely ill and eventually led him to abandon the life of the court and to pursue a life of asceticism and mysticism.
The Jewish scholar Samaw’al al-Maghrībī (d. 1174) saw the prophets Samuel (his namesake) and Muhammad in dreams immediately before his conversion from Judaism to Islam. However, in his autobiography, which he appended to a polemic tract against Judaism, stung by criticism that he might have converted because he had been “deceived by jumbled dreams” [aḍghāth aḥlām; see Q 12:44], he asserts that the dreams were not the cause for his conversion but rather a warning:
Despite Samaw’al's need to clarify that he converted on the basis of rational arguments and proofs of Islam's status as the true faith rather than solely because of his visions, he obviously considered the dreams significant and persuasive for at least some of his readers, for he would not otherwise have included them in his text.The reader of these pages should now understand that it was not the dream that had induced me to abandon my first faith. A sensible man will not be deceived about his affairs by dreams and visions, without proof or demonstration. . . . It was those proofs and demonstrations that were the cause of my conversion and for taking the right path. As to the dream, it served merely to alert and to prod me out of my procrastination and inertia.[41]
Samaw’al al-Maghribī's dream of the Prophet Muhammad and al-Simnānī's vision in the midst of battle provide the background to the authors' religious conversions. Samaw’al converted from Judaism to Islam and al-Simnānī gave up worldly life to devote himself to mysticism. Rosenthal, as we have seen, deemed Samaw’al's account of his vision unconvincing. But the important point is that these authors, and others we shall discuss below, reported these experiences with the clear expectation that their readers (or at least some of them) would find these accounts convincing. They are reported as acts of suasion and, in these two cases, provide the sole motivation offered in the text for one of the most important decisions of the authors' lives. These reported experiences, in this sense, function much as an act of personal confession or divulgence functions in a modern western autobiography: the author reveals a previously hidden and completely personal motivation for a dramatic act in his past.
A similar dream that motivates the author's action is that of ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (d.1201) (text translated in this volume). He was accompanying Saladin's uncle, Nūr al-Dīn, when they arrived at a mosque that had recently been damaged in an earthquake. Nūr al-Dīn pledged to have the mosque restored and to have the prayer niche decorated in gold and mosaic, but he died before carrying out his plans. Nūr al-Dīn later appears to ‘Imād al-Dīn in an admonitory dream saying that the prayer niche needs his attention. ‘Imād al-Dīn replies that he has appointed someone to take care of it, but Nūr al-Dīn repeats his message. ‘Imād al-Dīn immediately writes to his retainer, who indeed had not yet begun the work, and tells him to begin the restoration forthwith.
Another function of dreams is not the legitimation of an act or decision by the author but an affirmation of his spiritual or scholarly status. Al-Tirmidhī (d. between 905 and 910) (text translated in this volume) recounts his conversion experience to the mystical life while in Mecca on pilgrimage. In this case, the conversion itself is not occasioned by a vision; however, when he is later describing how he immersed himself in fasting and prayer, secluded himself from society, and took long walks in the wilderness, amid the ruins and in cemeteries, he begins recounting a series of dream narratives. First, he tells us of his own visions of the Prophet Muhammad. Next he recounts his wife's dreams (which occur sometimes in Arabic and sometimes in Persian) in which she encounters angels who give her messages to pass on to her husband. These dreams were, according to al-Tirmidhī, “always so clear and so obvious that they needed no interpretation.” Finally, he recounts dreams of acquaintances and friends about him (“I saw the Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace!—surrounded by light and praying with [the author] right behind him, praying along with him”).
Similarly, the scholar Abū Shāma (d. 1268) (text translated in this volume) recounts his own dreams and then those of his mother, his brother, and a number of acquaintances, all of which point to Abū Shāma's high standing as a scholar. In his case, several of the dreams are explained in the text by various devices, including by figures in the dream itself. For example, the author's brother dreamed that he saw Abū Shāma dangling from a rope hanging down from heaven; he asks a figure in the dream the meaning of this and is whisked off to the Dome of the Rock where the figure explains to him that his brother has been given knowledge similar to that which had been given to Solomon.
The single most common dream motif in this corpus of autobiographies, however, is a dream seen by one of the author's parents that is a harbinger of his birth and that, in addition, sometimes leads to the choice of name or profession for the child.[42] Ibn al-‘Adīm (d. 1262) (text translated in this volume) reports that his father was deeply saddened by the death of his first son at an early age, but then he had two dreams. In the first the dead child appears and says, “Father, tell my mother that I want to come to you,” and in the second he sees a shaft of light emerge from his male organ and hang over their house. The dream is interpreted to mean the arrival of a son, and shortly thereafter the mother gives birth to the author. Similarly, the father of al-‘Aydarūs (d. 1628) had a dream two weeks before the author's birth in which he saw gathered a number of Muslim mystics. Because of this dream, his father was convinced that his son would become an important man and gave him three names from those of the two saints he saw in his vision: ‘Abd al-Qādir and Muḥyī al-Dīn after Shaykh al-Jīlānī and Abū Bakr after Shaykh Abū Bakr al-‘Aydarūs.
Only a small number of the dreams cited in these texts are complex enough to be susceptible in any interesting way to psychoanalytic interpretation. Dream accounts are found, however, in a wide variety of sources in premodern Arabo-Islamic culture, and such interpretation might prove more useful elsewhere. In this particular body of texts, dreams at times communicate the author's justification for earlier actions or affirmation of his status and occasionally serve as portents of the future. Almost all are tied, one way or another, to the issue of textual authority. They function as the displaced authority of the authorial “I”: what the author cannot say merely on his own authority, he can support with testimony from an outside source through the narration of a dream or vision. This interpretation does not address the “reality” of the dreams themselves or even the author's sincerity but rather the selection of dream accounts and the occasion for their inclusion in texts that purport to be a truthful representation of the author's life.