Dreams In Arabic Culture

Dreams have many meanings in Arabic culture. According to some, sleep is a preoccupation of the soul, which detaches itself from external things and experiences events taking place in its interior. During sleep the interior self “absorbs” the five senses, which then cease to perceive and turn back to the mind. According to other views, the soul can perceive the form of things by the senses and by thought, independently of their objective reality. Thought does not fall asleep when the faculty of perceiving sleeps, and during the night images continue to exist as if they could be sensed. Their form is outlined in the soul, and they are presented to the mind of the dreamer in the same way as in the waking state.

It is believed that the soul, when it is freed from the physical limits of the body, can float at ease over everything that it desires to possess, whereas in the waking state it cannot. When dreamers awaken, they still preserve the memory of these fantastic pictures. If the dreamer has a blemished soul, the dreamer is continually deluded by dreams, whereas the dreamer is unde- ceived when the soul is pure.

Traditional Arab belief also holds that dreams are generated by the fundamental humors of the human body, and that individuals dream accord- ing to their temperaments. Certain Arabs com- pletely separate the faculty of perception from the visible body and believe that individuals, when asleep, can leave their bodies and contem- plate the world with a lucidity proportional to their purity, a notion supported by various verses of the Qur’an.