Ibn Umar's dream of Hell and the night prayer

Ibn Umar asked for this dream. He was a young man who slept in the mosque, he watched older Companions bring their dreams to the Prophet ﷺ, and he told himself that if there were any good in him he would see one too. Then he said as much to Allah. What he was shown was the edge of Hell, and an angel telling him not to be afraid. The reply that reached him, carried by his sister, was short, kind and conditional, and the narrations disagree on exactly how it was worded.

A young man's request, and what he was shown

Ibn Umar says that men among the Companions used to see dreams in the Prophet's lifetime and tell them to him, and that he interpreted them as Allah wished (Bukhari 7029). He slept in the mosque while young and unmarried (Bukhari 440), and one night, as he lay down, he asked: if You know any good in me, show me a dream. The Arabic asks only for "a dream". The English of Bukhari 7029 says "good dream", and that word is the translator's. In Bukhari 7030 the request is for a dream the Messenger of Allah could interpret for him.

Two angels came to him, each holding a mace of iron, and led him toward Hell. Between them he kept saying that he sought refuge with Allah from it. A third angel met them and told him not to be afraid (Bukhari 7029). Iron maces appear in the Qur'an's own description of the Fire (Qur'an 22:21), and angels "harsh and severe" are set over it (Qur'an 66:6), so the scene is made of familiar parts. At the edge, Hell was built like a well, with "horns" like a well's. Bukhari 7029 has several, with an angel between each pair, and the versions through Salim have two. The English renders the horns as posts (Bukhari 7029), poles (Bukhari 1121), side-walls (Bukhari 3738) or pillars (Muslim 2479a); the Arabic word is the same each time, qarn. Only the fullest version adds men hanging upside down in chains, among them men of Quraysh he recognised. Then the angels took him to the right-hand side (Bukhari 7030).

One conditional, told four ways

The narrations come by two routes. Bukhari 7029 and Bukhari 1156 are from Nafi', and Bukhari 7030, Bukhari 1121, Bukhari 3738 and Muslim 2479a are through al-Zuhri from Salim, Ibn Umar's son. The difference that matters is who says "if only he prayed", and when.

Read across the rows and a pattern shows. Wherever the night appears, it is in the Prophet's own words and never the angel's. In Bukhari 7029 it does not appear at all: the angel has the conditional, "if you prayed much", and the Prophet's remark has the praise without any condition. In the other versions the condition is his. The Arabic also uses 2 different phrases that English folds into "good man": "ni'ma al-rajul" (what an excellent man) and "rajul salih" (a righteous man). We cannot tell from the texts which wording is closest to what he said, and nothing in the meaning depends on it.

The last column is not the Prophet's. Each note is a narrator's report of what Ibn Umar did next, and it is worded as a habit, "used to", not as an event.

Which dream was the remark about?

In Bukhari 1156 Ibn Umar tells 2 dreams in one narration: a piece of silk in his hand that flew him wherever he wished in Paradise, and the two who came to take him toward Hell. Then he says that Hafsa told the Prophet "one of my dreams", and the remark about the night prayer follows. Bukhari 7015 and Bukhari 7016 give the silk dream alone, with a different remark, that he is a righteous man, and with the narrator unsure whether the Prophet said "your brother" or "Abdullah".

The same narration goes on to something else. The Companions kept telling the Prophet dreams that placed the Night of Power on the seventh of the last 10 nights, and he said he saw that their dreams agreed on the last 10 nights (Bukhari 1156). It shows dreams in his days being told, compared and read in the open.

What the remark is, and what it is not

The Prophet does not interpret the picture. Nothing in any narration says what the well, the maces or the chains stood for. What he reads is the dreamer, and his reading is praise with one condition. We would not turn that into a ruling for everyone, and the narrations do not do so either. The note in some narrations that Ibn Umar afterwards slept little at night is close in sense to the Qur'an's description of the righteous, who "used to sleep but little of the night" (Qur'an 51:17-18). That match is ours, and no narrator draws it.

Someone who has had a dream of Hell should not lift a verdict from this one. Ibn Umar asked for a dream, had it read by the Prophet and heard words of comfort, which no later dreamer can repeat in the same way, and the manners for an ordinary frightening dream are laid out in what to do after a good or bad dream. For another dream in which the Prophet was shown the Fire and the pictures were explained to him, see the longest dream in the Sunnah. The silk dream is touched on in Aisha wrapped in silk, and the dictionary entry on angels shows what the compilers add.