Dream interpretation traditions
Islamic dream interpretation and the Ibn Sirin tradition
The Islamic dream-interpretation tradition is the largest and most systematic body of symbol reading in the history of the subject. It is also considerably more careful than the version of it that circulates online, and the care is the interesting part.
What this page is
What follows describes readings recorded in this tradition, with the tradition's own qualifications attached. It is not a claim that a dream about any of these things means anything, and it is not religious guidance.
The tradition distinguishes three kinds of dream, and the distinction does most of the work. A true dream (ruya), an ordinary dream produced by the self (hadith al-nafs), and a distressing dream attributed to the devil. Only the first is held to carry meaning, and the tradition is clear that it is the rarest of the three.
That single classification is the most useful thing on this page. A framework in which most dreams mean nothing is a more disciplined instrument than a dictionary in which every dream means something, and it is the opposite of how the tradition is usually presented.
Interpretation was treated as a serious skill with conditions attached: knowledge of the texts, knowledge of the language and its metaphors, and knowledge of the dreamer. The same image was expected to read differently for different people, which places the tradition closer to Artemidorus than to a modern dictionary.
Muhammad ibn Sirin, who died in 728 CE, was a real figure of the generation after the Prophet and was renowned for interpreting dreams. The large manuals sold under his name are later compilations gathering material from several hands, and the single-author attribution does not survive scholarly examination. The tradition is genuine and old; the byline is a convention.
What the tradition says about particular images
Only the images this tradition genuinely treats. A symbol with nothing behind it here does not get a page, which is why this list is shorter than a dream dictionary.
- Snake in islamic interpretationSnakes are among the most reported dream animals and the most contradictory. Across traditions they carry both threat and renewal, the bite and the shed skin, and which one is active in your dream is usually decided by the fear, not by the snake.
- Water in islamic interpretationWater is the most frequently reported dream element, and its readings are unusually consistent across traditions: emotion, the unconscious, and whatever is too large to be argued with. Depth and clarity carry most of the meaning.
- Fire in islamic interpretationFire is the most double-edged element in dream reports: destruction and purification, anger and warmth. What decides the reading is whether you are near it or in it, and whether you lit it.
- Teeth in islamic interpretationTeeth falling out is one of the most reported dreams in every population studied, and one of the few where the research is genuinely interesting: it correlates with dental irritation during sleep more strongly than with any of the meanings usually offered for it.
- Blood in islamic interpretationBlood in dreams is reported far more often as vitality, kinship or alarm than as violence. The most useful question is whose it was, and whether anyone in the dream reacted.
- Dead relative in islamic interpretationDreams of the dead are extremely common in bereavement, are frequently reported as comforting rather than distressing, and are taken seriously by grief researchers as part of how mourning proceeds. What they are not is evidence of contact.
- Wedding in islamic interpretationWedding dreams are dominated by things going wrong: the wrong dress, the wrong person, nobody arriving. The commitment is rarely the anxiety; the ceremony is.
- Falling in islamic interpretationFalling is one of the most reported dreams in every population studied. The jolt that often accompanies it, a hypnic jerk, is a well-understood physiological event, and it is frequently the cause of the dream rather than its result.
- Flying in islamic interpretationFlying is the most positively reported dream experience there is, and the most strongly associated with lucidity. Many people who realise they are dreaming try to fly, and many who fly realise they are dreaming.
Where this site stands
Memento Somnia does not hold that dreams carry messages, and nothing in this section is offered as an interpretation of your dream. What the database records is what people report dreaming and what research has established about it, which is a different subject and is kept in different pages.
The dream database →Sources and reviewed references
2 references. What these labels mean
- 1.
- 2.