Islamic dream dictionary
Search for a symbol: you will read what two classical interpretation books say about it, word for word and with page numbers. Nothing invented, nothing predicted.
Did a dream upset you? What the Sunnah asks you to do
All symbols, A to Z (57)
- A man, someone you know
- Ablution (wudu)
- Baby, child
- Bird
- Blood
- Bread
- Cat
- Clothes
- Crying
- Devil, Satan
- Dog
- Excrement
- Eyes
- Falling
- Fire
- Fish
- Flood
- Flying
- Gold, jewellery
- Hair
- Henna
- Honey
- House
- Illness
- Jinn
- Kaaba, Mecca
- Lion
- Marriage, wedding
- Meat
- Milk
- Money, coins
- Moon
- Mosque
- Mouse, rat
- Nakedness
- Prayer
- Pregnancy
- Prison
- Quran
- Rain
- Religious scholar, sheikh
- Scorpion
- Sea
- Sheep, ram
- Snake
- Sorcery, black magic
- Spider
- Stars
- Sun
- Teeth
- The dead, death
- The Prophet ﷺ
- Travel, journey
- Urinating
- Water
- Woman
- Worms, maggots
After a bad dream: what the Sunnah asks
The Prophet ﷺ taught that an unpleasant dream comes from Satan, and that it does not harm the one who does the following. (al-Bukhari 7045 · al-Bukhari 3292)
Seek Allah’s protection, three times
Against the evil of this dream and against Satan. The wording given by al-Nawawi: “aʿūdhu billāhi mina sh-shayṭāni wa min sharrihā” — I seek refuge with Allah from Satan and from the evil of this dream. (al-Bukhari 7044 · Muslim 2262 · al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 15/18)
Blow lightly three times to your left
The narrations say “blow” (nafth), “spit lightly” (tafl) or “spit” (basq): a light breath, to drive Satan away. (Muslim 2261 · al-Bukhari 7044 · Muslim 2262)
Turn over onto your other side
Change the side you were sleeping on. (Muslim 2262)
Get up and pray
If you can; al-Nawawi recommends two units of prayer (rakʿa). (Muslim 2263 · al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 15/18)
Tell no one about it
Neither recount it nor seek to have it interpreted. A Bedouin dreamt that his head was cut off; the Prophet ﷺ told him: “Do not tell of how Satan toys with you in your sleep.” (al-Bukhari 7045 · Muslim 2263 · Muslim 2268 · al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 15/18)
“It will not harm him”: that is the promise of the hadith. Al-Nawawi adds that doing only some of these acts is enough, by Allah’s leave. (al-Bukhari 7045 · al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 15/18)
After a good dream
Praise Allah
It comes from Allah: say “al-ḥamdu lillāh”. (al-Bukhari 7045)
Tell it only to someone who loves you
Or to a person of sound judgement. Yaʿqub told Yusuf: “Do not relate your vision to your brothers.” (al-Bukhari 7044 · Abu Dawud 5020 (graded authentic by al-Albani) · al-Tirmidhi 2278 · Yusuf 12:5)
Do not treat it as a ruling
Even a good dream establishes no religious ruling: sleep is not a state of verification. (al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 1/115)
What the Quran and Sunnah say about dreams
The three kinds of dreams
The Prophet ﷺ said: “Dreams are of three kinds: the righteous dream, glad tidings from Allah; the dream that saddens, from Satan; and the dream arising from what a person tells himself.” (Muslim 2263)
The Quran also reports the words of the king of Egypt’s counsellors about a dream they did not understand: “a jumble of dreams” (aḍghāth aḥlām). Not every dream is a message: only the righteous dream is glad tidings. (Yusuf 12:44 · al-Bukhari 6990)
The true dream, a part of prophethood
“Nothing remains of prophethood except glad tidings,” said the Prophet ﷺ; asked what they were: “the righteous dream”. The believer’s dream is “one of forty-six parts of prophethood”, and “those of you with the truest dreams are those truest in speech”. (al-Bukhari 6990 · al-Bukhari 6994 · al-Bukhari 7017 and Muslim 2263)
“The prophets’ dreams are revelation,” said the Successor ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr, reciting the verse about Ibrahim. They come true: Yusuf’s dream (eleven stars, the sun and the moon prostrating), of which he later said “this is the interpretation of my dream of old”; Ibrahim’s dream about his son; the Prophet’s ﷺ dream announcing the entry into Mecca. (al-Bukhari 138 · as-Saffat 37:102 · Yusuf 12:4 · Yusuf 12:100 · al-Fath 48:27)
Who may interpret a dream?
Interpretation is a science: Allah told Yusuf He would teach him “the interpretation of narratives”. Imam Malik, asked whether anyone could interpret dreams, replied: “Does one play with prophethood?”; only one skilled in it should do so, and if he sees something unpleasant, let him say something good or keep silent. (Yusuf 12:6 · Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Tamhid 1/288)
Even the best of the Companions could be partly wrong: Abu Bakr interpreted a dream before the Prophet ﷺ, who told him: “You were right in part and wrong in part.” An interpretation remains a human effort, not a certainty. (al-Bukhari 7046 and Muslim 2269)
And appearances deceive: a dream that looks unpleasant may be interpreted as good, and vice versa, notes al-Nawawi. That is why a single symbol read in a dictionary says nothing certain about your dream. (al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 15/18)
وقال مالك لا يعبر الرؤيا إلا من يحسنها فإن رأى خيرا أخبر به وإن رأى مكروها فليقل خيرا أو ليصمت
Malik said: “Only one who is skilled in it should interpret dreams. If he sees good in it, let him tell it; if he sees something unpleasant, let him say something good or keep silent.”
A dream is not a fatwa
Al-Nawawi reports the scholars’ agreement: a dream does not cancel an established Sunnah nor establish a new one; no ruling of the Law rests on a dream, for the sleeper does not verify what he hears. This holds even when one sees the Prophet ﷺ in a dream. (al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim 1/115)
Our advice, accordingly: make no serious decision — breaking up, divorcing, accusing someone — on the strength of a dream. For a real question, turn to a trustworthy person of knowledge.
لا أنه يقطع بأمر المنام ولا أنه تبطل بسببه سنة ثبتت ولا تثبت به سنة لم تثبت وهذا بإجماع العلماء
… not that one decides on the strength of a dream: a dream does not cancel an established Sunnah, nor establish one that is not established; the scholars agree on this.
Never make up a dream
“The worst of lies is for a man to claim his eyes saw what they did not see”: claiming to have dreamt what one did not dream is a grave lie. (al-Bukhari 7043)
Where do this dictionary’s interpretations come from?
From two classical works, quoted word for word, with the page of the edition and a link to that page in the al-Shamela library. Each excerpt was checked on that page before publication. Translations and summaries are ours.
al-Nabulusi, Taʿṭīr al-Anām fī Taʿbīr al-Manām
Alphabetical dictionary by the Damascene scholar ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143 AH / 1731), completed in 1069 AH (1658). He says he followed, more fully, the method of a predecessor, Ibn Ghannam. Edition cited: Dar al-Fikr, Beirut.
The book attributed to Ibn Sirin
Muhammad ibn Sirin (d. 110 AH / 729), a Successor from Basra, was renowned for interpreting dreams; al-Bukhari reports a saying of his on seeing the Prophet ﷺ. But the book circulating under his name, the Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Ahlam, is not his: it quotes Ibn Qutayba (213–276 AH), born more than a century after his death, and speaks of Ibn Sirin in the third person. The al-Shamela library’s note deems the attribution baseless, and most of its interpretations unsupported claims. We quote it because that is the name many search for, always labelled “attributed to”, after al-Nabulusi. (al-Bukhari 6993 and Muslim 2266)
The book itself quotes Ibn Qutayba:
قال ابن قتيبة رضي الله عنه يجب على العابر التثبيت فيما يرد عليه وترك التعسف
Ibn Qutayba said: the interpreter must verify what is put to him and refrain from arbitrariness.
What we do not do
We add no interpretation of our own, predict nothing, and do not cover objects these books do not know (phones, planes, banknotes…): deriving them would be invention.
57 symbols, 196 quoted excerpts.
Frequently asked questions on dreams in Islam
Further reading
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