Dreams in the Sunnah · Bukhari 7034
The two gold bracelets and the two liars
The short answer
In a dream two gold bracelets were put on the Prophet's arms. He disliked them, was told to blow, and they flew away. He read them as two liars who would arise, and one narration names them by the lands they ruled: Sana'a and Yamama.
Traditional interpretations, not a fatwa and not a prediction. How we source.
In this article
Gold on a man's wrists is the detail that gives this dream away. A pair of bracelets sounds like a pleasant thing to be given, and the Prophet ﷺ reacted with alarm. That reaction turns out to be part of the evidence.
Four tellings of one dream
Abu Huraira and Ibn Abbas between them carry the dream in four places, and they agree on more than they differ. It helps to lay them next to each other.
| Narration | What was put on him | How he felt | What he did | His reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bukhari 7034 (Ibn Abbas, who says it was told to him) | 2 golden bangles in his 2 hands | Frightened, and disliked them | Was given permission to blow; they flew away | 2 liars who will appear |
| Bukhari 4375 (Abu Huraira) | The treasures of the earth, and 2 gold bangles | Did not like it | Was inspired to blow; both vanished | The 2 liars between whom he lived: the ruler of Sana'a and the ruler of Yamama |
| Muslim 2274b (Abu Huraira) | The treasures of the earth presented, and 2 gold bangles | A burden, and he was disturbed | Was told to blow; both disappeared | 2 great liars: one of Sana'a, one of Yamama |
| Bukhari 3621 (Ibn Abbas, from Abu Huraira) | 2 gold bracelets round his arm | Worried "too much" | Was told in the dream to blow them off | 2 liars who would appear after him |
The centre never moves. Two gold ornaments are placed on the arms, he dislikes them, he is told to blow, and a breath is enough to remove them. What varies is the surrounding scene: only Abu Huraira's versions begin with the treasures of the earth, and the name of the lands appears only in Bukhari 4375 and Muslim 2274b.
One detail is easy to miss. In Bukhari 7034 Ibn Abbas does not say he heard the Prophet ﷺ tell it. He says it was mentioned to him. The names of the two men are then added by a later narrator, 'Ubaidullah, who says one was al-Ansi, killed by Fairuz in Yemen, and the other was Musaylima. So in that narration the identification is a narrator's gloss on the Prophet's words, and in Bukhari 4375 it is the Prophet's own, given by place.
Why the image troubled him
The narrations say that he disliked the bracelets, and that he was frightened by them or felt them as a weight. They do not say why. The reason commentators usually give is the one nearest to hand: gold is not for men, and the Prophet ﷺ had already put it away in waking life. Bukhari 5867 records him wearing a gold ring, throwing it aside and saying he would never wear it again, and that the people threw theirs away too.
We would hold that link loosely. It is plausible, and it explains the reaction, but the hadith gives the reaction and leaves the reason unstated. What the dream does show beyond doubt is that the Prophet ﷺ treated his own distaste as a signal. He did not enjoy a dream of treasure and ornament and then look for a flattering meaning. He noticed the unease first, and the reading he arrived at was an unwelcome one.
The surrounding verses help explain why such claims were grave. The Qur'an asks who is more unjust than the one who says "it has been inspired to me" when nothing has been inspired to him (Qur'an 6:93), and it calls Muhammad ﷺ "the last of the prophets" (Qur'an 33:40). Neither verse interprets this dream. They show the ground on which two claimants to prophecy would stand, and why the dream's image is one of false adornment.
A breath was enough
In every version the cure is a breath. The Prophet ﷺ blows and the bracelets fly away. Commentators read this as the small effort it takes, with Allah's help, to remove claims that look heavy and glittering. That is a reading, and it is a reasonable one, because the history fits.
The sources leave a trail. Al-Ansi, in Yemen, was killed by Fairuz, as 'Ubaidullah says in Bukhari 7034. Musaylima came to Madinah in the Prophet's lifetime with many of his people and said he would follow Muhammad ﷺ only if he were made his successor. The Prophet ﷺ went out to him with a piece of a date-palm leaf in his hand and said that if Musaylima asked for even that, he would not give it. He added that he thought Musaylima was the person he had seen in the dream (Bukhari 3621). The wars after the Prophet's death are where Musaylima's story ends, and that is outside the hadith.
A note on the word. The verb for blowing in these narrations (nafakha) is not the verb in the instruction for a disliked dream, to spit lightly on the left three times and seek refuge with Allah (Muslim 2261a). The two gestures do not translate each other. What they share is a modest action that removes a thing without a struggle, and we offer that as an observation only.
What carries over to your own dreams
Very little of this is a rule, and one lesson is a caution. The hadith interprets one dream of one Prophet, and the interpretation was his. It does not say that bracelets in a dream mean liars, and it gives nobody a right to read a modern pair of figures as claimants. The tradition is clear that interpretation of this weight needs a source that none of us has.
Three practical points do carry over. First, how you feel on waking is information, and the Prophet ﷺ gave his own unease weight. Second, an interpretation should be tied to what is in the image: a pair, worn, gold, removed with a breath. Third, a confirmed reading is a different thing from a prediction, and the history that fits it came later. For gold and ornaments in the dictionary, see gold in a dream and a ring in a dream, which weigh the Sunnah's cautions against what the compilers say. The same Abu Huraira narrates the dream of the treasures of the earth, treated in the keys of the treasures, and the pattern of reading by action and by what follows is explained in the three kinds of dreams.
Common questions
What did the two gold bracelets mean in the Prophet's dream?
He interpreted them himself as two liars who would appear. In Abu Huraira's version he says they were the two liars between whom he was living, the ruler of Sana'a and the ruler of Yamama (Bukhari 4375). Narrators identify them as al-Ansi in Yemen and Musaylima in Yamama (Bukhari 7034).
Does dreaming of gold bracelets mean false prophets?
No. The hadith interprets one dream of one Prophet, and he reads the image by what happened to him: he disliked the gold, he blew it away, and the interpretation followed. It is not a rule that bracelets in your own dream stand for liars. The dictionaries treat gold on a man with caution, but that is a convention.
Why did the Prophet ﷺ dislike the bracelets?
The narrations record only that he was frightened and disliked them (Bukhari 7034), or felt a burden (Muslim 2274b). Commentators link this to the ruling that gold is not for men, since the Prophet ﷺ himself once threw away a gold ring (Bukhari 5867). That link is theirs, not stated in the hadith.
Reviewed 5 October 2026 by The Editorial Team. We cite our sources and fix mistakes openly: see our editorial standards, or report a correction.