Wind in a dream

In Ramadan, when Jibril met him each night to go over the Qur'an with him, the Prophet ﷺ was at his most generous, and Ibn Abbas, who reports it, found a comparison: more generous than the wind that is sent forth (Muslim 2308a, Bukhari 6). It is the kindest wind in the sources, one that gives without being asked and without counting.

It is also the same word as the wind that made his face change. When a strong wind blew, anxiety showed on the Prophet's face, and the Companions could see it (Bukhari 1034). The wind in Islamic sources is therefore not one thing, and the Arabic text often signals which wind you are meeting, in a way translations lose.

One word in the plural, one in the singular

When the wind is what brings rain and good news, the Qur'an's word is plural, رِيَاح. He sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy (Qur'an 7:57, Qur'an 25:48, Qur'an 27:63), and as bringers of good tidings so that you taste His mercy and the ships sail (Qur'an 30:46). When the wind is a punishment, the word is singular, رِيح. It is the barren wind sent against 'Ad, which left nothing it passed over except ruins (Qur'an 51:41-42), the screaming, violent wind of 7 nights and 8 days (Qur'an 69:6-7), and the wind with a painful punishment inside the cloud they had welcomed (Qur'an 46:24).

We went through the Arabic text, and the habit holds as a tendency and not a law. The plural turns up in 10 verses, 9 of them about rain, clouds, ships or signs (for example Qur'an 2:164, Qur'an 15:22, Qur'an 35:9, Qur'an 45:5) and one about dried vegetation scattered (Qur'an 18:45), and it never appears in the verses about 'Ad. The singular is mostly the harsh wind, but it also names the good wind that carries ships before a storm wind overtakes them (Qur'an 10:22) and the wind that Allah subjected to Sulayman, running at his command (Qur'an 21:81). The Sunnah does not keep to it strictly either, because the Prophet's generosity is compared to a singular, الرِّيحِ الْمُرْسَلَةِ, the wind sent forth (Bukhari 6). Treat it as a habit of the language: many winds for a mercy, one wind for a job.

The wind that helped and the wind that destroyed

The Prophet put the whole subject in a sentence: he was granted victory by the east wind, and 'Ad were destroyed by the west wind (Bukhari 1035). Same element, two outcomes, in a single breath. The Qur'an has a case on the helping side too: armies came against the believers, and Allah sent a wind upon them, and armies of angels they could not see (Qur'an 33:9).

That is why the Sunnah teaches a way of facing the wind that is neither dread nor dismissal. Aisha reports what he used to say when it blew hard: O Allah, I ask You for its good, the good it contains and the good of that for which it was sent, and I seek refuge in You from its evil, the evil it contains and the evil of that for which it was sent (Muslim 899b). In a hadith that the three graders listed by our source call sound, he said that the wind comes from Allah's mercy, that it brings blessing at one time and punishment at another, and that one should not revile it but ask for its good and seek refuge from its evil (Abu Dawud 5097). That one is outside the two Sahih books, so we use it as support only.

For a dream, the lesson is a method. A wind carries a good and an evil in the same breath, so the dream is read by what the wind did, not by how loud it was.

Reading the wind by what it does

The dictionaries follow the Qur'an's split: a mild wind, cool air or the breeze that fills a sail leans toward ease and mercy, and a violent wind toward a trial. They also read what a wind carries or scatters, and here the Qur'an offers three pictures of loss: deeds like ashes on a stormy day (Qur'an 14:18), a person carried by the wind to a remote place (Qur'an 22:31), and a harvest wrecked by a freezing wind (Qur'an 3:117). Those verses are about people who rejected faith and not about dreamers, and we take from them only the image: a wind that carries off what was built.