Ibn Sirin

Eighth-century scholar, best-known name in Islamic dream interpretation.

Muhammad ibn Sirin lived in Basra, in present-day Iraq, and died in 728. He was a tabi'i: someone from the generation after the companions of the Prophet. In his time he was known as a transmitter of hadith, as a pious and honest merchant, and above all as an exceptionally gifted interpreter of dreams.

The famous dream book that bears his name, Tafsir al-Ahlam al-Kabir, was according to most historians not written by him. It was compiled centuries later from sayings and stories attributed to him, supplemented with material from other interpreters. That does not make the book worthless, but it does make it a collection of a tradition rather than the work of one man.

The stories about Ibn Sirin above all reveal his method. He interpreted the same dream differently for different people, because he looked at who the dreamer was. A well-known example: two men dreamt that they called the adhan, the call to prayer. One, a pious man, would make the pilgrimage; the other, about whom he knew something else, would be accused of theft. Both readings went back to Quranic verses in which a call is made.

He drew on the Quran, the hadith, proverbs and the meaning of words and names. A dream image could thus gain a meaning through a verse or a sound. He was also cautious: about many dreams put to him he said nothing, and he warned against interpreting without knowledge.

Many Islamic readings on Dreamkin refer to the works attributed to Ibn Sirin. We phrase it that way deliberately, because the attribution is uncertain, and we present the readings as classical possibilities, depending on the dreamer and their situation.