Dreams in the Qur'an · Qur'an 48:27
The vision of the Sacred Mosque and the year it did not name
The short answer
Qur'an 48:27 says Allah made the Prophet's vision of entering the Sacred Mosque true. Bukhari shows the day it seemed to fail: Umar's questions, the reply that no year had been named, and entry the year after.
Traditional interpretations, not a fatwa and not a prediction. How we source.
In this article
Bukhari's long account of Hudaybiyyah has a she-camel that sits down and will not rise, a well that is drained and fills again, and a treaty text in which the other side objects to the Prophet's title. It never once mentions a dream. The one verse that speaks of the vision, Qur'an 48:27, never mentions Hudaybiyyah. This page keeps the two sources side by side and asks what each says, because the usual retelling joins them with a sentence that neither contains.
What Qur'an 48:27 says, clause by clause
The verse is a single sentence with five parts, and it helps to take them one at a time.
| Clause | In Arabic | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Allah has made the vision true for His Messenger, in truth | صدق الله رسوله الرؤيا بالحق | The noun is ru'ya, used for sleeping visions elsewhere and, in Qur'an 17:60, for something Ibn Abbas calls a seeing of the eye (Bukhari 4716) |
| You will surely enter the Sacred Mosque | لتدخلن | Plural, addressed to the Companions, with the emphatic form |
| If Allah wills | إن شاء الله | The condition sits inside the promise |
| In safety, heads shaved or shortened, fearing no one | آمنين محلقين رؤوسكم ومقصرين | These are acts of finishing the rites, as the Prophet's own shaving after the sacrifice at Hudaybiyyah shows (Bukhari 2701). No date comes with them |
| He knew what you did not know and arranged before that a near conquest | فتحا قريبا | Sahih International has the conquest arranged "before that", meaning before the entry, and the verse does not name it |
The verse says nothing about when. It names a place, a state of safety and the rite's closing acts, and the only expression of order it contains is "before that" in Sahih International's wording, about the near conquest. It also does not say that the vision was a dream in sleep. The word ru'ya allows both, and commentators take it as a dream. The Hudaybiyyah narrations do not say either way.
Umar's questions, told two ways
Umar's exchange with the Prophet ﷺ after the terms were agreed is the best-known scene of the day, and two Bukhari narrations give it differently.
| Narration | What Umar asked | What he was told |
|---|---|---|
| Bukhari 2731 (al-Miswar and Marwan) | Aren't you truly Allah's Messenger? Is not our cause just and theirs unjust? Why then be humble in our religion? And: didn't you tell us we would go to the Ka'ba and circle it? | That he is Allah's Messenger, does not disobey Him, and will be given victory. On the Ka'ba: yes, but had he told them it would be this year? Umar said no, and the Prophet said they would go and circle it. Abu Bakr gave Umar the same answer |
| Bukhari 3182 (Sahl ibn Hunayf, speaking at Siffin) | Aren't we in the right and they in the wrong? Aren't our dead in Paradise and theirs in Hell? Then why accept hard terms? | That he is Allah's Messenger and Allah will never ruin him. Abu Bakr said the same. Surat al-Fath was then revealed and recited to Umar, who asked if it was a victory, and the Prophet said yes |
Only the first narration carries the question about circling the Ka'ba, and so only there does a prior promise appear. The second, told by a Companion at Siffin, concentrates on right and wrong. Neither says that the promise Umar recalls was the vision. We take the link from the commentators, and we treat it as theirs.
The Companions' mood is recorded elsewhere. Anas says that on the way back from Hudaybiyyah, after the Prophet had slaughtered his sacrifice there, sorrow and gloom weighed on them when the opening verses of Surat al-Fath came down. The Prophet said a verse had been sent down to him that was dearer to him than the whole world (Muslim 1786a). A narration through Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father, has him telling Umar on a night march that a sura had come that was dearer to him than all the sun rises upon, and reciting the first verse (Bukhari 4177). That narration names no place. Anas also says that the "manifest victory" of Qur'an 48:1 refers to the Hudaybiyyah settlement (Bukhari 4834). Al-Bara' counts the men that day as 1,400 (Bukhari 3577).
The promise that did not name a year
Look at the Prophet's reply to Umar in Bukhari 2731. He concedes the promise and denies the date. He had said they would go to the Ka'ba, he agrees, but he had not said when, and he does not call Umar's expectation foolish. Abu Bakr gives the same reasoning when Umar goes to him next. Qur'an 48:27 has the same shape in its own clause: "if Allah wills", and a near conquest first.
The year was fixed not by the vision but by the treaty. Bukhari 2700 gives the third term as coming to Makkah in the following year, staying 3 days, and entering with weapons in their cases. Bukhari 2701 reports that the Prophet slaughtered his sacrifice and had his head shaved at Hudaybiyyah, agreed to perform the umra the following year, did so, entered Makkah under the treaty, and left when they ordered him to after 3 days. Anas also counts an umra in the following year after the peace (Bukhari 1778). The commentators identify that entry as the fulfilment of Qur'an 48:27, and an entry made under a peace treaty fits the verse's "in safety".
Common questions
Is the dream before Hudaybiyyah told in Bukhari?
Not in the Hudaybiyyah narrations we checked (Bukhari 2731, Bukhari 3182). They speak of a promise to go to the Ka'ba and never of a dream. What we know of the vision's content comes from Qur'an 48:27 itself: entering the Sacred Mosque in safety with heads shaved or shortened. The setting, a dream seen before the journey, is the biographers' and commentators' account.
What happened when the Prophet told the Companions to slaughter and shave?
In Bukhari 2731 he told them three times to get up, slaughter their sacrifices and shave, and none of them rose. He went to Umm Salama, who advised him to say nothing to anyone, slaughter his own sacrifice and call his barber. When he did, the narration says, they got up and did the same, so quickly that they nearly harmed one another.
Did Umar regret his questions at Hudaybiyyah?
The narration says so in a note from az-Zuhri: Umar said he did many good deeds to make up for the improper questions he had asked (Bukhari 2731). The Prophet's answers to him in the narration carry no rebuke. Years later another Companion present that day, Sahl ibn Hunayf, told the men at Siffin to blame their own opinions (Bukhari 3182).
Reviewed 5 October 2026 by The Editorial Team. We cite our sources and fix mistakes openly: see our editorial standards, or report a correction.