Ru'ya in Islam: dreams in the Qur'an and the tradition of the Prophet
The dream in Islam: the sura of Joseph, the dream of Abraham, the distinction between ru'ya and hulm, and the true dream as part of prophecy in the hadith.
In Islamic culture the dream holds a place of great importance, both in the sacred text and in the tradition of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Arabic carefully distinguishes two kinds of night experience: ru'ya, the truthful vision that may contain a divine message, and hulm, the confused or disturbing dream. This distinction has guided religious thought and the practice of interpretation for centuries, giving rise to one of the richest dream literatures in the world.
Dreams in the Qur'an
The Qur'an devotes an entire sura, the twelfth, to the story of Yusuf, the biblical Joseph. The narrative opens with the young man's dream, in which he sees eleven stars, the sun and the moon bowing down before him, and continues with the dreams of his fellow prisoners and of the king of Egypt. The sura insists that the ability to interpret dreams is a gift granted by God.
Another famous episode concerns Abraham, who in the thirty-seventh sura tells his son that he has seen in a dream that he must sacrifice him. The son accepts, but God intervenes and ransoms him with a victim. The Qur'an also recalls a dream of the Prophet about the believers entering Mecca, presented as a truthful vision that would come to pass, and a vision before the battle of Badr.
Dreams in the hadith
The hadith collections, the sayings and deeds attributed to Muhammad, contain many teachings on dreams. According to a tradition reported by Aisha, revelation to the Prophet began with truthful dreams, which came true as clear as the light of dawn. A much-quoted saying states that the true dream of the believer is one of the forty-six parts of prophecy.
Other hadith distinguish three kinds of dream: those that come from God, those suggested by Satan to sadden a person and those that arise from the person's own thoughts. Believers were advised to tell good dreams only to those they love and not to spread bad ones. After Muhammad's death, according to tradition, prophecy ceased, but truthful visions remain.
Dreams and religious life
Islamic tradition also gave dreams a role in the life of the community. The biographies of saints and scholars often report dreams in which the Prophet appears, considered especially authoritative because, according to a hadith, Satan cannot take on his likeness. In Sufi mysticism night visions were part of the spiritual path and were discussed with the master.
The great historian Ibn Khaldun, in the Muqaddimah composed in 1377, devotes some pages to the science of dream interpretation, considering it a religious discipline born within the Muslim community. He describes its principles and recalls the most famous interpreters, showing how fully it was integrated into the learning of his time. Ibn Khaldun places it among the sciences born within the religious law, alongside jurisprudence and exegesis.
The study of ru'ya thus allows us to understand a profound aspect of Islamic civilisation, in which the border between sleep and waking was seen as a possible space of communication with the divine, governed however by precise criteria of caution and discernment. These criteria, worked out by jurists and mystics, carefully distinguished the dream to be treasured from the one to be forgotten.