Umm al-'Ala, 'Uthman ibn Maz'un and a spring that kept flowing

Over a body already shrouded in its clothes, a woman of Madinah said what most of us would say at a funeral: Allah has honoured you. The Prophet ﷺ had just come into the house, and he asked her how she knew. She said she did not. Everything else in Bukhari 7018, the dream included, grows out of that exchange.

Six places in Bukhari, three wordings of one sentence

Umm al-'Ala was an Ansari woman who had pledged allegiance to the Prophet ﷺ. When the Ansar drew lots to decide which emigrant each household would shelter, 'Uthman ibn Maz'un fell to hers. He fell ill, they nursed him, and he died in their care (Bukhari 7018). Bukhari tells it 6 times, in 4 of his books: Funerals (Bukhari 1243), Witnesses (Bukhari 2687), Merits of the Helpers (Bukhari 3929) and, 3 times, Interpretation of Dreams (Bukhari 7003, Bukhari 7004, Bukhari 7018). The conversation is in all 6. The dream is in 4.

Only 4 of the 6 carry the dream. Bukhari 7003 is filed with the dreams but stops at her vow, and Bukhari 7004 supplies the rest, on Az-Zuhri's authority. The sentence the Prophet says about himself comes down in 3 wordings, which the note near the end sets out.

The Prophet's question and her vow

The question the Prophet ﷺ asks is the hinge of the hadith. She had nursed 'Uthman to the end, and she spoke the way anyone might. He asks how she knows. Then he says "as for him, certainty has come to him", and يقين (yaqin), certainty, is the Qur'an's word for the end of a life: "worship your Lord until the certainty comes to you" (Qur'an 15:99, where the translation glosses it as death). Next, in every full telling, he says he hopes good for him. He hopes. He does not declare.

Then comes the sentence people remember. Bukhari 7018 has him add that, though he is the Messenger of Allah, he does not know what will be done "to me and to you". In Arabic the words for "what will be done to me and to you" are exactly those of Qur'an 46:9, "nor do I know what will be done with me or with you". The hadith does not cite the verse, and we claim nothing about how the two relate beyond the shared words.

Umm al-'Ala's answer is the quiet centre of the story: by Allah, she will not vouch for anyone after 'Uthman. The verb is أزكي (uzakki), to declare someone pure or righteous. It is also the verb in the Prophet's own formula for praising a person: say that you think so and so is good, that Allah is his reckoner, and that you vouch for no one before Allah (Bukhari 2662). The Qur'an uses the same root in "do not claim yourselves to be pure" (Qur'an 53:32). None of the narrations records how the Prophet answered her vow. They record only that she made it.

Sorrow first, then the spring

In 3 of the 6 narrations she says what happened inside her next: "that grieved me", وأحزنني (ahzanani), and then "so I slept" (Bukhari 2687, Bukhari 3929, Bukhari 7004). The English gives "made me sad" and "I felt very sorry", and Bukhari 7018 skips the grief and goes from the vow straight to the dream. The grief is hers, and nothing says the Prophet ﷺ knew of it.

The dream is one image, a spring running for 'Uthman. The Arabic noun is عين ('ayn), a spring (the same word means an eye), and two of the translations call it a stream. In Bukhari 2687 and Bukhari 3929 she says she was shown it, and in Bukhari 7018 and Bukhari 7004 that she saw it. She took it to the Prophet. His reading is short: "that is his deed" in Bukhari 2687, Bukhari 3929 and Bukhari 7004, and in Bukhari 7018 "that is his deed, running for him". The English brackets "(the symbol of)" and "(the reward for)" belong to the translators.

What the Prophet's reading leaves out

The reading says less than it seems to. It does not say where 'Uthman is, and it does not say that the spring answers her testimony. It speaks of deeds. The Qur'an pictures Paradise with flowing springs (Qur'an 88:12, Qur'an 55:50), but the hadith cites neither verse. One link is ours, and we mark it as ours: Muslim 1631 lists 3 kinds of deed that go on after a person dies, ongoing charity (صدقة جارية, from the same root as the spring that runs), knowledge that benefits others, and a righteous child who prays for him. Neither hadith cites the other, and Bukhari 7018 does not say which of 'Uthman's deeds were running.

For how the dictionaries use this precedent, see water in a dream and a river in a dream. For what a dream can and cannot establish, see can dreams be true in Islam. Umm al-'Ala took her dream to the Prophet himself, and whom to tell, and when not to, is the subject of the etiquette of telling a dream.