Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies

Ozgen Felek, Alexander D. Knysh (editors)

Paperback, 334 pages

9781438439945

A wide-ranging consideration of the place of dreams and visions in Islamic societies from the premodern period to the present.

Dreams and visions have always been important in Islamic societies. Yet, their pervasive impact on Muslim communities and on the lives of individual Muslims remains largely unknown and rather surprising to Westerners. This book addresses this gap in understanding with a fascinating and diverse account, taking readers from premodern Islam to the present day. Dreams and visions are shown to have been, and to be, significant in a range of social, educational, and cultural roles. The book includes a wealth of examples detailing the Sufi experience. Contributors use Arabic, Persian, Indian, Central Asian, and Ottoman sources and employ approaches grounded in history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, religious studies, and literary analysis. This is an illuminating work, showing how ordinary Muslims, Muslim notables, Sufis, legal scholars, and rulers have perceived both themselves and the world around them through the prism of dreams and visions.

Contents

Part I

Dreams in Biographical, Historical, Theological, Poetical, and Oral Narratives, and on the Internet

1. Dreaming the Truth in the Sīra of Ibn Hishām

Sarah Mirza 

2. Dreaming Ḥanbalites: Dream-Tales in Prosopographical

Dictionaries 

Maxim Romanov 

3. Numinous Vision, Messianic Encounters: Typological Representations in a Version of the Prophet’s ḥadīth al-ru’yā and in Visions and Dreams of the Hidden Imam 

Omid Ghaemmaghami 

4. Dreaming the Elixir of Knowledge: How a Seventeenth-Century Poet from Herat Got His Name and Fame

Derek J. Mancini-Lander

5. Dreaming ‘Osmāns: Of History and Meaning 

Gottfried Hagen

6. Sometimes a Dream Is Just a Dream: Inculcating a “Proper” Perspective on Dream Interpretation 

Fareeha Khan

7. Dreams Online: Contemporary Appearances of the Prophet in Dreams 

Leah Kinberg

8. Transforming Contexts of Dream Interpretation in Dubai 

Muhammad alZekri

Part II

Dreams in Sufi Literature

9. Dreams and Their Interpretation in Sufi Thought and Practice             

Jonathan G. Katz 

10. Behind the Veil of the Unseen: Dreams and Dreaming in the Classical and Medieval Sufi Tradition 

Erik S. Ohlander

11. Witnessing the Lights of the Heavenly Dominion: Dreams, Visions and the Mystical Exegeses of Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī 

Elizabeth R. Alexandrin

12. Narrating Sight: Dreaming as Visual Training in Persianate Sufi Hagiography

Shahzad Bashir

13. (Re)creating Image and Identity: Dreams and Visions as a Means of Murād III’s Self-Fashioning 

Özgen Felek

14. The Visionaries of a Ṭarīqa: The Uwaysī Sufis of Shāhjahānābād

Meenakshi Khanna