The broken sword, the cows and the land of palms

Most of the Prophet's dreams that the Companions remember are tidy. This one comes with a correction in the middle of it: he says he guessed the land of palms was Yamama or Hajar, and he was wrong. It is the best-preserved case we have of a Prophet reporting his own first impression of a dream and then watching it change.

Three images in one dream

The dream is reported by Abu Musa al-Ash'ari in Bukhari and Muslim, with the Prophet's reading attached to each part. It helps to set them in a table, because the hadith moves quickly between the picture and its meaning.

Two things are easy to blur. The interpretations are given in the hadith, in the Prophet's voice, so they are not later guesses. But the identifications with a particular victory, usually the conquest of Makkah, are the commentators'. The Arabic says al-fath, "the victory" or "the opening". The English translation in Bukhari adds "of Mecca" in brackets, and that bracket is the translator's.

The translations also differ on the sword. One has it break "in the middle" and another has its "upper end" broken. The Arabic word is sadr, the front part of the blade, and we would not build a reading on the exact point of the break.

The first guess that was wrong

The detail we find most instructive is the small one. In Bukhari 3622 and Muslim 2272 the Prophet ﷺ says that his thought went to Yamama or Hajar, two lands known for palms, and that it was in fact Yathrib. The Arabic uses a word for a first impression or a leaning of the mind (wahali), and the narrations keep it.

Why preserve it? Because it shows how the Companions understood a dream's content. The land was real and recognisable by its palms, but which land it was had to be waited for. The dream gave an image, and the place name came with events. A reader today who is sure what a dreamed city is should remember that the Prophet ﷺ himself waited.

Reading the image by what it is made of

Each part has a plain logic once the Prophet ﷺ names it. A sword is the strength of a force, so a sword that breaks is a force that is hurt. A sword that mends and becomes better than before is a force restored and then stronger. Cows are a herd that is slaughtered, and he reads them as those who fell. None of this is arbitrary, and each link is one that anyone can follow, which is why the dream is a good model of how the tradition reads: the meaning sits in the thing's function.

Two cautions keep it honest. First, this is a dream about a community and its leader, and the reading fits that case. It does not give bladed things or cattle a fixed meaning for every dreamer. The dictionary entries on a sword and a cow say where the compilers differ. Second, the short phrase about Allah's goodness, "and Allah is good" in one rendering, shows that even a well-attested hadith can have a line whose English is unsettled. The English of Bukhari 7035 gives the reward given by Allah as better than worldly benefit, and the English of Muslim 2272 gives Allah as the Doer of good. Both are fair, and we flag the difference rather than choosing silently.

What to take from it

The Prophet's own dreams show three habits that are useful whatever you are reading. Hold your first guess loosely, as he did. Tie each reading to something in the image. And keep the Prophet's interpretation separate from what commentators later added to it, since the second is a good reading and the first is a source.

For a dream with a similar structure, a pair of objects, an unwelcome feeling and an interpretation that history confirmed, see the two gold bracelets. For a vision where a promise was given and its timing was misunderstood by the people who heard it, see the Prophet's vision before Hudaybiyyah. The dictionary entries on dates and on travelling cover the other two images.