Amid Sleeping and Waking: The Relationship between Dreaming and Spatiality in the Literary Writings of Tanūkhī (d. 348/994) and Dream Manuals from the 4th/10th Century

Abstract

My dissertation studies the relation between dreams and space in Tanūkhī’s compilations and dream manuals of the 4th/10th century. Differences between interpretive and literary contexts are examined in the light of image and sound authorities in Islam. The impact of visual culture in early Islamic dream manuals – Ibn Qutayba’s and Dīnawarī’s and Khargūshī’s – is tracked through interpretations of architectural features. Dreams mentioned in such manuals are pictorial, preceded by authentic isnāds, and affected by narration. Depicted colorful and vivid, architectural aspects reflect issues of gender and social ranking. Surprisingly, graves and mosques are not mentioned in dream manuals, and prisons are the only spaces deviating interpretation. However, several narrations by Tanūkhī reveal the importance of incubating dreams through visiting a shrine or sleeping in a miḥrāb. Prison is also present in thirteen other narrations holding themes from the story of Prophet Joseph in Quran. In Tanūkhī’s anthologies, isnāds are questioned, interpreters are almost absent, and sounds are dominant for dreams are considered part of prophecy. Dreams in different contexts are simulation of riḥla where certain travel targets are achieved such as seeking prophetic sayings, trade, recovery, and legitimizing authorities. Regarding virtual displacement, dreams also carry themes of mi‘rāj and poets’ birth. Tanūkhī’s choices did not meet dreams in riḥla genre, but Hamadhānī’s maqāmāt where literary criticism is embedded. Dreams overall resemble Muslim’s riḥla in life, since neither birthplace nor death place matters, but only achievements done along the way.