In a notable scholarly undertaking that restores attention to one of the most important texts of the Arabic intellectual tradition, a new critical edition of al-Bishāra wa-l-Nidhāra fī Taʿbīr al-Ruʾyā by Abū Saʿd al-Kharkūshī has recently been published by the American University of Beirut (AUB) Press under the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan series for Arabic and Islamic Texts. The work is among the most famous treatises on dream interpretation and was mistakenly attributed to Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn for several centuries. This new edition follows the sellout success of the first edition, published in 2023 by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, which attracted considerable interest from scholars and readers of Arabic heritage.
Edited by Professor Bilal Orfali, Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arabic and Islamic Studies at AUB, and Dr. Lina Jammal, researcher in Arabic and Islamic Studies, the volume represents the first rigorous critical edition of the text, based on a meticulous comparison of some of the oldest surviving manuscripts. The publication corrects a long history of inaccurate transmission: for decades, the work circulated in popular editions riddled with errors, many of which can be traced back to the Būlāq Press edition of 1867. These flawed printings reinforced the text’s erroneous attribution and obscured its original structure.
The volume combines scholarly rigor with elegant design. Its cover features Queen of Dreams, an artwork by the Syrian artist Mahmoud Daoud, evoking the world of visions and dreams that forms the book’s central subject.
Al-Bishāra wa-l-Nidhāra fī Taʿbīr al-Ruʾyā is organized into fifty-nine chapters covering a wide range of themes and symbols, making it one of the most comprehensive works in its field. Beyond its significance for the study of dream interpretation, the text serves as a unique historical source. Unlike conventional chronicles, it preserves valuable insights into everyday life, including foodways, architecture, clothing, tools, and weaponry, while also reflecting social attitudes toward gender, marriage, inheritance, political authority, and sectarian divisions, among many other topics.
This edition forms part of a broader research project undertaken by the editors to revive classical dream-interpretation literature through reliable scholarly editions. They previously edited Tuḥfat al-Mulūk fī al-Taʿbīr by Abū Aḥmad Khalaf ibn Aḥmad al-Sijistānī, one of the earliest texts in the field, and are currently preparing a critical edition of al-Mumattiʿ fī al-Taʿbīr by Ibn al-Qaṣṣār al-Qayrawānī. Together, these projects aim to reconstruct an important intellectual tradition and make its sources available to scholars according to modern academic standards.
As the editors emphasize, the value of editing and publishing these works extends far beyond the interpretation of dreams. Such texts provide researchers with analytical tools for understanding the cultural and historical contexts in which they were produced. Ultimately, they are not merely manuals of dream interpretation but gateways to broader worlds of thought, imagination, and representation within Arab-Islamic civilization.
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