The fresh dates of Ibn Tab and a reading built on names

Read Muslim 2270 in English and it is a gentle dream with a gentle meaning. Read it in Arabic and the meaning turns out to be made of the same letters as the scene. The house is that of 'Uqba, son of Rafi'. The dates are Ibn Tab's. And what the Prophet ﷺ takes from them is "the outcome", "elevation" and "it has become good". Anyone asking whether the Sunnah ever reads a dream by the sound of words will find this short report the clearest case that we know of among its dream narrations, and it is also a lesson in how little a narration may say about its own method.

Three names, three words

Anas reports that the Prophet said he saw, one night, in what a sleeper sees, that "we" were in the house of 'Uqba ibn Rafi' and that some fresh dates of Ibn Tab were brought to us. Then comes the interpretation, in his own first person: elevation for us in this world, the outcome in the Hereafter, and that our religion has become good (Muslim 2270). Abu Dawud gives nearly the same words (Abu Dawud 5025). Set the scene next to the reading and the match is plain.

The reading does not follow the order of the names. It takes the elevation first, then the outcome, then the goodness, while the scene names 'Uqba, Rafi' and Tab in that order. Each word shares all its root letters with the name it echoes, three for three, and that leaves little room for coincidence.

Two printings of one report, and a silence

Muslim 2270 and Abu Dawud 5025 both reach Anas through Thabit and Hammad, so we have one report printed twice, and both give the same three words of reading. They differ at the opening. Muslim has "one night, in what the sleeper sees", a phrase that marks the vision as a dream. Abu Dawud has the single word for "tonight", which can also be taken as "last night". Neither changes anything that follows. Abu Dawud's English prints the three key words in brackets, and those brackets are the translator's, though they point to the same three Arabic words. Three of the grades our copy prints for Abu Dawud 5025 are sahih, and the fourth notes only that the report is in Muslim.

Two things the narrations do not do. They never say who "we" are: the scene, the dates and the reading are all in the plural, and the Prophet does not say whom he includes. And they never say "because". He says "I interpreted" and gives the three words, and nobody in the chain explains how he got from the scene to them. The link is something we can see in the Arabic, not something we are told, and we want to keep that line clear.

The Qur'an's words for the same things, and the fruit nobody read

Each of the 3 words has a home in the Qur'an's language of reward, which is where interpretation traditionally begins. The outcome "is for the righteous" (Qur'an 28:83), and there the translation we use puts "best" in brackets: the Arabic word on its own is just the outcome. Allah "will raise" those who believed, by degrees (Qur'an 58:11), from the same root as the elevation. And the keepers of Paradise tell the righteous "you have become pure" (Qur'an 39:73), the very verb in "our religion has become good". Those links are ours. The Prophet cites no verse, and we draw them only to show how ordinary the vocabulary is.

The one thing in the dream that gets no reading is the fruit. The Arabic رطب (rutab) is the word the Qur'an uses for the ripe dates Maryam is told to shake down from the palm (Qur'an 19:25). Nothing in the report says the dates meant anything; whatever the dream had to say was read from the names around them. The dictionary entry on dates in a dream weighs what the compilers say about the fruit itself. Another dream where the Prophet's answer was a single word, religion, is in the shirts.

How far a name can carry a reading

Awake, the Prophet did attend to the meaning of names. He changed 'Asiya, a name that means disobedient, to Jamila (Muslim 2139a). Ibn Abbas reports that he changed Barra to Juwayriya, and that he disliked it being said that he had come out from Barra (Muslim 2140). He also said that the best omen is the good word one of you hears (Bukhari 5754). In a report from Hudaybiyya he says, when Suhail ibn 'Amr arrived to negotiate, that the matter had now become easy (Bukhari 2731). The Arabic verb there is built on the same letters as Suhail's name, but the narration never says the name was the reason.

For another dream that was named by place and not by word, see the two gold bracelets, and for the way the tradition separates a Prophet's reading from the dreamer's, see who was Ibn Sirin and the science of ta'bir.