The hand in a dream

Some of the Prophet's wives once settled a question by measuring their arms with a stick. They had asked which of them would be the first to follow him in death, and he had answered: the one with the longest hand. They measured. Only later did they understand what he had meant, and it was not length at all: the long hand was the one that gave in charity (Bukhari 1420).

Everything about the hand in a dream starts from that kind of usage. The Arabic hand is almost never just a hand. It gives or withholds, pledges, holds fast, testifies. The dreams recorded in the Sunnah add a second layer, because several of them put an object in a hand. We take the idiom first and the dreams second, and keep the dictionaries for last.

A long hand and a chained hand

The reports of the measuring do not agree on which wife's hand the stick found longest. Bukhari 1420 names one, and Muslim 2452 names Zaynab, who worked with her own hands and gave what she earned. They agree on the meaning: a long hand is a hand that gives. The Prophet also said that the upper hand is better than the lower, and the same report explains that the upper hand is the one that spends and the lower the one that asks (Bukhari 1429).

The Qur'an has the same idiom in both directions. "Do not make your hand chained to your neck," it says, "or extend it completely," and the verse warns of ending up blamed and insolvent (Qur'an 17:29). The hand tied is miserliness, the hand fully open is waste, and the verse wants the measure between. In another verse some say that the hand of Allah is chained, and the answer is that their hands are chained, while both His are extended and He spends as He wills (Qur'an 5:64). The same verse reverses the insult.

None of these is a dream, so the step to the dream is by usage. That is the tradition's third step, and it is a short one here: a hand held open is read as giving, and a closed or bound hand as withholding.

What was put in the hand: 4 dreams from the Sunnah

Several dreams in the Sunnah, the Prophet's own and his companions', are about something placed in or held by a hand. The keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to him in his sleep until they were put in his hand (Bukhari 6998). Two gold bangles were put in his hands, he disliked them, and he was inspired to blow on them, and they vanished. He interpreted them as the two liars between whom he stood (Bukhari 4375, and Bukhari 7034 gives the same dream). Ibn Umar saw a piece of silk in his hand that carried him to any place in Paradise he waved it toward, and the Prophet, hearing it from Hafsa, said that Abdullah was a righteous man (Bukhari 7016). Abdullah ibn Salam grasped a handhold at the top of a pillar and woke still holding it, which the Prophet read as holding firm to Islam until he died (Bukhari 7014).

Look at what is explained. Nobody interprets the hand. Where the Prophet gives a meaning it goes to the thing held, the keys, the bangles, the handhold, or to the dreamer himself, as with Ibn Umar, whom he called righteous. The hand tells you only that the thing is in the dreamer's grasp or charge. The stories are given at full length in the two gold bracelets and the firm handhold.

If you want a single rule from them, it is this one: ask what you are holding before you ask what the hand means.

Hands that testify, bite and pledge

The Qur'an gives the hand three more jobs. On the Day, mouths are sealed and hands speak to Allah (Qur'an 36:65), so the hand is a witness to what a person earned. The wrongdoer bites on his hands in regret (Qur'an 25:27). And when believers pledged allegiance, the hand of Allah was over their hands (Qur'an 48:10), which makes a clasped hand a pledge.

The Qur'an also has a scene where hands are hurt in amazement: the women who saw Yusuf were so struck that they cut their hands (Qur'an 12:31). That scene is about being overwhelmed, not about injury.

If the hand held gold or a ring, those have their own entries: gold and a ring. For the long hand as a way of giving, see giving charity in a dream.