Drowning in a dream

The Prophet ﷺ gave a list of martyrs that is longer than most people expect. 5 kinds of people, he said, are martyrs, and one of them is the one who drowns (Bukhari 2829). In another report, after telling the Companions that if only those slain in Allah's way counted, the martyrs of his community would be few, he named more, and one version adds that whoever is drowned is a martyr (Muslim 1915b).

That is an odd place to begin an entry on a frightening image, but it is where the Sunnah begins. When it speaks of drowning at all, it does so to honour the person who drowned. It is not a dream rule, because the hadith are about real deaths. It does question an assumption people bring to the image: that going under is itself a verdict.

Two drownings that point opposite ways

The Qur'an has a different set of drownings, and they read differently. "We drowned them" is said of the people of Noah, who denied the messengers (Qur'an 25:37), and of Pharaoh's people, whom Allah took in the sea after they denied His signs (Qur'an 8:54, Qur'an 28:40). Each of these is a consequence for people who refused after warning. The believers who were with Moses saw it happen (Qur'an 2:50), and those who were with Noah were carried on the ship (Qur'an 29:15).

Put the two side by side and the difference is not the water. In the Sunnah's list the manner of death is the only thing named, and no fault is mentioned; the Qur'an's drowned are named peoples who refused warning. So drowning is not a verdict in itself, in either source. What carries the verdict is the cause and the person. A dream gives you the water and none of the cause, which is why we are slow to say what it means. We would ask what you were doing in the water, whether you called on Allah, and how it ended.

"Now?": the late declaration, and the mercy that holds it back

The most memorable drowning in the Qur'an is Pharaoh's last sentence. When drowning overtook him he said, "I believe that there is no deity except that in whom the Children of Israel believe" (Qur'an 10:90), and the answer was a single word, "Now?", followed by a reminder that he had disobeyed before (Qur'an 10:91). His body was saved so that he could be a sign for those who came after him (Qur'an 10:92). The scene is about timing: a declaration made with the water already closing.

Set Qur'an 36:43-44 beside it: if Allah willed, He could drown people, and no one would answer their cry, "except as a mercy from Us and provision for a time". And Qur'an 17:69 asks whether people feel secure that He will not send them back into the sea and drown them for what they denied. Between those 3 verses you get a picture of drowning as something mercy holds back, and that no one should take for granted. That is the nearest the Qur'an comes to a stance on the image, and it is a stance about how to feel on waking, not a prediction.

Swimming: the long day and the orbit

The Arabic verb for swimming, سبح, is used in the Qur'an in two ways that make a useful pair. For the sun and the moon, "each, in an orbit, is swimming" (Qur'an 36:40, and Qur'an 21:33): a body moving along the path it has been given. And the Prophet is told that the day holds a long occupation for him, sabhan tawilan (Qur'an 73:7), the work that keeps a person moving through the day.

That gives a footing, through vocabulary, for reading easy swimming as steady management of a long stretch of affairs, and swimming that turns to struggle as being overwhelmed by them. It is an analogy and not a hadith. The one swimmer the Prophet ﷺ is recorded seeing in a dream is the man in the river of blood who is fed stones, and the angels who showed him explained that he was the eater of usury (Bukhari 7047); we treat that as a prophet's vision about one named sin, and read it with the river.