Dreams And Their Meanings In The Old Arab Tradition

The reader must be aware that with over 1,700 titles on dreams and their meaning, the Moslem tradition of dream interpretation surely surpasses all that is to be found concerning this matter, in any other culture. It is easy also to imagine that ancient Egyptian, Assyrian or Babylonian dream interpretation sources, far from being lost, were preserved and further developed by the Arabs. The Moslem environment was well suited for interpreting dreams. Arabic, spoken from Morocco to India, is rich with many homonyms and double entendre words. There is an inexhaustible storytelling tradition of which, the famous 1001Nights, is but one example. The many religious and proto-scientific writings which appeared from early on in this culture, number in the tens of thousands. For those trying to understand their dreams, no dream dictionary seems ample enough. According to this art's foremost Arabic interpreter, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sireen Al-Ansari, born in Al-Basra, Iraq in 653 AD, dreams worthy of consideration are rare. Ibn Sireen used to choose one dream in every forty for interpretation. He used to spend a whole day with his visitor, investigating all the aspects of his life, his social surroundings and his psyche. According to him and other interpreters, the interpretation of the dream depends on the dreamer's social status, present inner state, ethics, physical characteristics, etc. The same image dreamt contemporaneously by different persons or dreamt by the same person at different times, has different meanings. Anyone taking the time to consider this art, can indeed observe a difficult complexity akin to the learning of an intricate, rich language, in which countless nuances of mind-states are expressed. Yet, this language is not whimsical but rather precise and more universal than thought at first.