Representation of Dreams in Medieval Sufi Texts: A Qualitative Study

For medieval Sufis, dreams were a portal to the spiritual realm. Their ideas are a valuable source for tracing and better understanding the sociocultural beliefs of today's Muslim people regarding the meaning and function of veridical dreams. We used the thematic analysis method to analyze 387 dream narratives from 34 books by Sufis from the 9th to the 15th centuries to determine how dreams were represented in these works. Five major themes were extracted: 1. dream as a mode of communication and as a messenger; 2. dream as a means of endorsement and validation; 3. dream as a source of feedback and as a premonition of 1's destiny; 4. dream as a means of divination and prophecy, and 5. dream as influential in daily lives. We discuss each of these themes, their meanings, and implications separately, and present different ethnohistorical evidence for these themes. Understanding Sufi culture regarding dreams might thus help us in better understanding the cultural foundations of these ideas in Muslim communities.