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Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and
Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in
Persian Local Histories
Mimi Hanaoka
Published online: 16 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Mimi Hanaoka (2014) Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan:
Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories, Iranian Studies, 47:2, 289-303, DOI:
10.1080/00210862.2013.860326
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Mimi Hanaoka

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Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their
Uses in Persian Local Histories

Persian authors couched claims to the religio-political authority and legitimacy of their
cities through dream narratives in local histories written between the tenth and
thirteenth centuries. Persians did not always fit neatly into genealogical claims to
legitimacy like the Arab descendants of Muḥammad and his clan, and dreams form
alternate avenues that sanctify and legitimate specific Persian cities and individuals.
Dream narratives embedded in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā and Tārīkh-i Ṭ abaristān are
literary devices that bring the prestige of religious authority to their city and province
and to specific persons. These dream narratives are not only windows into
understanding the broader social, political, and religious contexts of local histories but
also the particular anxieties and priorities of the authors.

“Whoever sees me in sleep has seen me, for Satan cannot appear in my form, and
the dream of the believer is 1/46th part of prophecy.”1

Introduction
Nearly 200 years after the Prophet Muḥammad died in the city of Medina, he reappeared 2,800 kilometers away in the Central Asian city of Bukhara. Muḥammad wore
a white cap2 on his head as he rode his camel al-Qaswāʾ into the central bazaar of
Mimi Hanaoka is Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Richmond,
USA.
1
Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl Bukhārī, S ̣ah ̣īh ̣ al-Bukhārī (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), vol. 3, Kitāb 92 altaʿbīr, Bāb 10, hadith 7080, p. 1415. On this hadith that dreams are part of prophecy, see M.J. Kister,
“The Interpretation of Dreams: An Unknown Manuscript of Ibn Qutayba’s “ʿIbārat al-Ruʾyā,” Israel
Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 71; see also John C. Lamoreaux, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream
Interpretation (Albany, NY, 2002), 83.
2
Narshakhī describes Muḥammad as wearing a “kulāh-e safīd,” and kulāh is the general Persian term
for a cap, though it could also more specifically mean a high or medium-high soft cap. The kulāh and the
qalansuwa—a cap worn either under a turban or by itself—were both part of a typical medieval Persian
costume. Both items are distinct from the turban (ʿimāma or dulband). EI2, “Libās”; “Tulband”; “Ḳ alansuwa.”

© 2013 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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290 Hanaoka

Kharqān.3 A large crowd gathered around Muḥammad, overjoyed that the Prophet of
Islam had come to their city on what was then the far eastern fringe of the Islamic
empire. The assembled multitude decided to lodge the Prophet in the home of
Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ al-Bukharī, a pious and ascetic local man. In a fitting
tribute to his prophetic guest, to whom God had transmitted his final revelation in
the form of the Qurʾan through the Angel Gabriel, Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣
recited the Qurʾan for the Prophet day and night for three days. In fact, it is
unknown if he did anything else while the Prophet stayed with him. The Prophet listened in silence and never once corrected Khwāja Abū Ḥ afs ̣, since his recitation of the
revelation was flawless.
The events in the above story are recounted in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, a medieval local
history written by Narshakhī about the city located in modern-day Uzbekistan. The
author explains that the meeting between Khwāja Abū Ḥ afs ̣ and Prophet Muḥammad
occurred not in waking life, but in a dream.
Dream narratives dot the literary landscape of medieval Persian local histories.
Islamic structures of authority were initially predominantly Arab and based, in large
part, on genealogies. Since Persians did not fit neatly into such genealogies, dream narratives were an important way in which medieval Persian historians couched claims to
authority and legitimacy between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Dreams often
function as literary devices that sanctify and legitimate specific Persian cities and individuals. This article examines Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, a thirteenth century local history
from the south Caspian region, and Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, a twelfth century Persian translation of a lost Arabic original local history from the tenth century. Both histories
adduce dream narratives in which their authors legitimate local iterations of Persian
Muslim identity through the potent and pious framework of dreams.

Scholarship on Dreams and Historical Writing
Previous studies that utilized local histories mined them for the traditional data that forms
the bedrock of social histories and political and economic accounts of the early Islamic
centuries.4 In addition to these more orthodox uses, local histories also demonstrate
how authors used dream narratives to sanctify their regions and legitimate local practices.
Dream narratives shed light on the anxieties and priorities of the authors in their specific
contexts. An issue of Iranian Studies in winter–spring 2000 dedicated to local histories
brought to the fore the rich potential of these “underused reservoirs,” by exploring the
aims, methods, and contexts of the Persian local histories and their authors.5
3
The female camel is known as al-Qaswāʾ, al-Jadʿāʾ, or al-ʿAdbāʾ. Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr b.
Yazīd al-Ṭ abarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. IX : The Last Years of the Prophet, translated and annotated by Ismail K. Poonawala (Albany, NY, 1990), 150–51.
4
See the works of C.E. Bosworth, A.K.S. Lambton, J. Paul, and C. Melville.
5
Charles Melville, “Persian Local Histories: Views from the Wings,” Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2
(Winter–Spring, 2000): 7–14.

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Scholars in the cognate field of Arabic historiography have taken pioneering
approaches and have explored the literary dimensions of early Islamic texts, and
there is rich potential to make similar headways into Persian historical writing.6
More fully engaging the portions of Persian local histories that are unverifiable and
have therefore been considered as suspect, such as dreams, are fruitful avenues for
exploring issues of identity construction particular to the Persian Muslim communities on the physical peripheries of the empire. Recent volumes on dreams by Lamoreaux, Marlow, Felek, and Knysh have significantly expanded our understanding of
dreams in Islamicate societies, but the use and meaning of dreams in Persian local histories remain an essentially untapped resource.7 As Melville noted in 2000, analyzing
the history of the Caspian histories as told by local authors would flesh out the
authors’ self-perceptions as well as biases.8
Dream narratives appear in multiple genres of medieval historical writing in
Arabic and Persian, including chronicles, dynastic histories, and local histories. alMasʿūdī and al-Ṭ abarī employed dreams in their chronicles to enrich the structure
of the narrative and for edifying purposes.9 The chronicler al-Dhahabī generously
wove dream narratives into his history. He was tolerant of these unverifiable
dream accounts, because in addition to their moral and literary potential, their
inherent unverifiability made dream narratives—in contrast to hadith—highly
supple tools at the author’s disposal.10 Medieval dynasties, including the Buyids
and the Ghaznavids, incorporated dreams into the narratives describing their
origins.11 Likewise, dream narratives shaped the stories about the beginnings of

6

Pioneering work by the late Albrecht Noth and recent contributions by Stefan Leder are characterized by their literary-critical methodology and drive to distinguish what is ostensibly fact from fiction in
medieval Islamic historical writing by paying close attention to literary devices, including topoi and
schema, to identify fictive or unreliable portions of narrative.
7
Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation; Louise Marlow, ed., Dreaming Across
Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands (Boston, MA, 2008); Ozgen Felek and Alexander Knysh, eds., Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany, NY, 2012).
8
Charles Melville, “The Caspian Provinces: A World Apart Three Local Histories of Mazandaran,”
Iranian Studies 33, no. 1/2 (Winter–Spring, 2000): 45–91.
9
Operating from a related premise that al-Ṭ abarī’s (d. 310/923) medieval chronicles, including the
various dream narratives embedded within them, should be read as unified narratives, El-Hibri reads
the texts as incorporating commentary—as opposed to pure reportage—about the events that transpired.
See Tayeb El-Hibri, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (New York,
2010); El-Hibri, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the
‘Abbasid Caliphate (Cambridge, 1999).
10
Cooperson rightly notes that “dream-stories concede from the outset that they can never be verified.
Having solicited a judgment based on a lower standard, they place themselves beyond (or below) dispute.
A story about seeing al-Khidr in sleep is therefore acceptable … while a claim to have seen him in reality is
not.” Michael Cooperson, “Probability, Plausibility, and ‘Spiritual Communication’ in Classical Arabic
Biography,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, ed. Phillip F. Kennedy (Wiesbaden,
2005), 73.
11
See Mohammad Mahallati, “The Significance of Dreams,” in Dreaming Across Boundaries (see note
7), 156.

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the Safavids and the Ottomans, and dreams also functioned as a literary device in the
epic Shāhnāma.12
Neglecting dream narratives in Islamicate historical writing strips the sources of
meanings rooted within the texts. In his critique of contemporary scholarship on
the medieval chronicler al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956), Moin notes that modern studies
tend to ignore dreams, which “represents a hermeneutical lapse in our approach to
early Islamic historiography: that is, a general tendency to prefer fact over ‘fiction’
and material over ‘immaterial’ reality … the dream belongs to the lost ‘intellectual scaffoldings’ with the help of which early Muslim historians constructed narrative.”13 Fact
and fiction are impositions of genre on dream narratives that do not fit conveniently
into either category. Dreams are an overlooked thread in that gauzy gossamer web of
references, one of myriad tensile cultural synapses that reinforced and reflected one
another in the once glistening and now dusty corpus of historical writing.
Reading Dreams as Social History
Dreams in historical writing serve multiple functions across the array of texts in which
they appear. Authors employed dream narratives to bring the sanction and prestige of religious authority and importance to their respective cities and provinces. Dreams can
indirectly advocate for a religio-political community, denigrate an individual, or legitimate
a local practice. Dreams can function as a liminal space through which the dreamer can
access authentic truth, whether it be in the form of the dead speaking from dār al-haqq or
the Prophet blessing the believer with a dream as a form of continuation of prophecy.14
The reason for the widespread use of dream narratives is that they have roots in
early Islamic society and contain standard phrases and motifs that were easily incorporated into local histories. Common tropes in dreams include images of a chain
for lineage, a tree emanating bright light, visions of Muhammad, Khiḍr, and abdāl
in dreams, as well as memorizing or learning material, such the Qurʾan and hadith,
during dreams.15 Their formulaic quality make dreams viable as malleable templates
to which authors could add particular judgments, whether they be judgments about
hadith transmitters or edifying messages about ideal behavior or belief.16
Sholeh Quinn, “The Dreams of Shaykh Safī al-Dīn in Late Safavid Chronicles,” in Dreaming Across
Boundaries (see note 7), 222.
13
A. Azfar Moin, “Partisan Dreams and Prophetic Visions: Shīʿī Critique in al-Masʿūdī’s History of
the Abbasids,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127, no. 4 (Oct–ober–December 2007): 415.
This is not to say that scholars have turned a blind eye to dreams and their uses. An early example is
the collection of essays in G.E. von Grunebaum and Roger Caillois, eds., The Dream and Human Societies
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1966).
14
Leah Kinberg, “Literal Dreams and Prophetic Hadith in Classical Islam—A Comparison of Two
Ways of Legitimation,” Der Islam 70, no. 2 (1993): 288.
15
On dreams and saints, see John Renard, Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and
Servanthood (Berkeley, CA, 2008), esp. chap. 3.
16
Leah Kinberg, “The Individual’s Experience as it applies to the Community: An Examination of Six
Dream Narrations Dealing with the Islamic Understanding of Death,” al-Qantara 21 (2000): 425–44.
12

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Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan 293

Authors of history and adab, using composite akhbār reports to draft their narrative works, could, without attracting attention, easily weave dream narratives
into their texts or just as easily eliminate them to reinterpret and shift the emphasis
of the narrative.17 Akhbārīs massaged the akhbār material to form a coherent narrative out of multiple and conflicting reports instead of including all of those
different and conflicting traditions, as a muhạ ddith would.18 Authors writing
history kneaded the sometimes considerable and conflicting material at their disposal into a coherent message, and dreams—reported as true and beyond the
realm of what was provable through eye-witness accounts—fit seamlessly into
the indissoluble continuum of historical writing that includes veracious and
fictive elements.
As literary devices, dreams capture the anxieties and concerns of the author as well
as the defining issues of the era in which the sources were written or translated.
Dreams can be read as social history embedded within historical texts. Meisami’s critical assessment of Noth and Leder is that “the idea that history should accurately and
objectively depict ‘reality’ is … a recent one … And when medieval Islamicate historians … employed the stylistic and rhetorical techniques … they were creating, not
fiction, but meaning.”19 Dreams gesture towards a perceived truth or concern that
the author wished to communicate indirectly.
Dreams in the Qurʾan and Hadith
The Islamic understanding of the origins and purpose of dreams, their significance,
and their interpretation is grounded in the hadith and the Qurʾan. Scholarship on
dreams and hadith in the Arabic literary tradition has been led, in significant part, by
Leah Kinberg and M.J. Kister.20 Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams is recorded in
Qurʾanic revelation in Sura 12 (Yūsuf), and there are references to ruʾyā, understood
as dreams or visions, in Suras 17:60, 37:105, 48:27. The Prophet Muḥammad
himself interpreted dreams and visions and was touched by God through them.21
Muḥammad describes the first experience of the revelation through the Angel
Gabriel as occurring during sleep, and after Gabriel departed, Muḥammad states,
17
It is the composite nature of how akhbār reports are used and incorporated into broader narratives
that make these akhbār reports so malleable. Stefan Leder, “The Use of Composite Form in the Making
of the Islamic Historical Tradition” in On Fiction and Adab (see note 10), 125–48.
18
Robert G. Hoyland, “History, Fiction, and Authorship in the First Centuries of Islam,” in Writing
and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim Horizons, ed. Julia Bray (London, 2006), 21–2.
19
Julie Meisami, “Masʿūdī and the Reign of al-Amīn: Narrative and Meaning in Medieval Muslim Historiography,” in Fiction and Adab (see note 10), 152.
20
Both Kinberg and Kister address the various interpretations and uses of dreams, and both have documented the use of dreams as a tool to confirm the veracity of a hadith.
21
In the Sira of the Prophet, al-Zuhrī reports on the authority of ʿUrwa b. Zubayr that one of the first
signs of prophethood that Muḥammad received from God were “true visions, resembling the brightness of
daybreak, which were shown to him in his sleep.” ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Hishām (d. 834), The Life of
Muhammad; A Translation of Ish ̣āq’s Sīrat rasūl Allah, Translated, with Introduction and Notes by
A. Guillaume (Lahore, 1967), 105.

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“I awoke from my sleep.”22 Hadith in the canonical collections attest to the trustworthiness of dreams in which the Prophet appears and generally support the authority of ruʾyā, or visions, which may occur during wakefulness or in sleep. The widely
transmitted prophetic hadith that a good dream is one forty-sixths part prophecy has
many variations.23
Prophetic hadith vouchsafe the veracity of a dream in which Muḥammad appears.24
Abū Hurayra transmitted the Prophetic hadith that whoever sees the Prophet in a
dream has seen him in wakefulness, and Satan cannot take the Prophet’s form. The
Prophet is said to have stated: “Who sees me in a dream sees me in waking life,
because Satan does not take my appearance.”25 Shiʿi hadith add that Satan cannot
take the form of the Shiʿi imāms and that Satan cannot even assume the figure of
anyone who is merely Shiʿi, either.26
Hadith prohibit lying about seeing the Prophet in dreams, and the formulae of
these hadith are similar to and often paired with similar prohibitions on lying
about hadith.27 A hadith transmitted on the authority of Abū Hurayra from the
Prophet states, “whoever tells a lie against me intentionally, then let him occupy
his seat in Hell-Fire.”28 A refrain that emerges from canonical hadith about
dreams is that good dreams (manāmāt sālih ̣a) are to be shared and bad dreams
(ad ̣ghāth ah ̣lām) kept to oneself.29 This provides a theological basis for promulgating good dreams.
Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān
Bahā al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥ asan ibn Isfandiyār (d. after 613/1217), known as Ibn
Isfandiyār, composed Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān in the early part of the seventh/thirteenth
century. Both E.G. Browne and ʿAbbās Iqbāl date the Ibn Isfandiyār’s composition of
22

Ibn Hishām, The Life of Muhammad, 106.
Variant traditions place dreams as 1/90, 1/70, 1/50, 1/44, 1/60, 1/49, 1/44, 1/45, 1/24, 1/25, 1/76,
1/40 1/46, 1/76, 1/26 part of prophecy. Kister, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 71.
24
For a discussion of this tradition, see Kinberg, “Literal Dreams.”
25
al-Bukhārī, Sah ̣īh ̣, Kitāb 92 al-ta‘bīr, Bāb 10, hadith 7079, pp. 1415. Alternate interpretations
suggest that if this hadith refers to contemporaries of the Prophet who have not emigrated to Medina,
then they will see the Prophet in Medina, and that if it refers to generations after the Prophet they
will see him in the next world. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Khat ̣īb al-Tibrīzī (fl. 1337), Mishkāt alMasābīh; English Translation with Explanatory Notes by James Robson (Lahore, 1975), Book XXIII
(Visions), Chapter 1, p. 962.
26
Kister, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 73–4.
27
Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā Tirmidhī, Sunan al-Tirmidhī (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), vol. 2, Kitāb 30 alruʾyā, Bāb 8, hadith 2452, p. 587. Such prohibitions also appear in the other canonical collections. See A.J.
Wensinck, Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden, 1936–88), I: 504 (h.l.m.) and V:
549 (k.dh.b.).
28
al-Bukhārī, Sah ̣īh ̣, vol. 1, Kitāb 3 al-ʿilm, Bāb 38, hadith 110, pp. 29–30.
29
Muḥammad ibn Yazīd Ibn Mājāh, Sunan Ibn Mājāh (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2000), Kitāb 36 taʿbīr
al-ruʾyā, Bāb 5, hadith 4045, p. 562. Muslim’s S ̣ah ̣īh ̣ includes various hadith in which the Prophet states
that one should not tell others of bad dreams, which are the caused by Satan. Muslim, S ̣ah ̣īh ̣ Muslim,
Kitāb 43 al-ruʾyā, Bāb 3, p. 980. The term “ad ̣ghāth ah ̣lām” appears in Q 12: 44 and Q 21: 5.
23

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the text to 613/1216.30 Ibn Isfandiyār describes the circumstances under which he wrote
the book, which suggest that he was well-traveled and probably spent time in Baghdad,
Rayy, Amul, and Khwarazm. It is likely that Ibn Isfandiyār composed his work partially
on the basis of other texts that he came across during his travels, including the no longer
extant Bāwand-nāma, composed for Ḥ usām ad-Dawla Shahriyār b. Qārin, and ʿUqūd
al-sih ̣r wa qalāʾid al-durār by Abū al-Ḥ asan Muḥammad al-Yazdādī.31
Embedded in the thirteenth century, Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān is a polemical dream
woven into a narrative about abdāl and two ʿUmars who ruled as caliphs. In this
dream, the second caliph of the Rashidun, ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb (ʿUmar I, d. 23/
644) is seen physically stationed a few levels below the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (ʿUmar II, d. 101/720). The dream episode reads as follows:
Ibn Isfandiyār states that in Khwarazm, he heard Nidhām [al-Dīn] Samʿānī speaking at the minbar say that in his sleep [be khwāb dīd] he saw one of the abdāl of the
Messenger of God (prayers and peace be upon him and his family), in the seat of
honor of the prophetic mission [dar sadr-e risālat neshaste]. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd alʿAzīz was beside him [pahlū-ye ou], and ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb was a few levels
under ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz [ʿUmar b. al-Khatṭ āb
̣ be-chand daraje zīr ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz]. “I asked: ‘Oh Messenger of God, who is this person sitting
beside you [pahlū-ye to]?’ He answered: ‘It is ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.’ I asked
them one by one until I reached ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb, and I asked ‘Oh Messenger
of God, how did Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz reach such closeness [Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz chandīn
qurbat be-che yāft]?’ And he replied ‘He was just.’ And then I asked ‘Was ʿUmar
b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb not more just than he?’ And he replied: He [ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb]
was just in an era of justice, and this [person, ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz] was [just]
in an era of oppression [ jūr] and injustice.”32
The ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz that Ibn Isfandiyār refers to is the Umayyad Caliph
known as ʿUmar II (r. 99–101/717–20), who was the great-grandson, on the maternal
side, of the second caliph of the Rashidun, ʿUmar b. al- Khat ̣t ̣āb, known as ʿUmar I (r.
13–23/634–44; d. 23/644). The abdāl featured in the dream are one of the rank of
saints who, according to different sources, vary in their number, with either 40, 269,

30

Multiple manuscripts of Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān have been incorporated into Iqbāl and Browne’s
respective editions. Of the four main and two supplementary manuscripts that Browne used in his
abridged translation 1905, all date from the eleventh to thirteenth century. Iqbāl based his 1941
Persian edition primarily on two manuscripts, one from the tenth century and another from the eleventh
century.
31
Bahā al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥ asan ibn Isfandiyār, Abridged Translation of the History of Tabaristān
Compiled about A.H. 613 (A.D. 1216) by Muh ̣ammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Isfandiyār, Based on the India Office
Ms. Compared with Two Mss. in The British Museum, by Edward G. Browne (Leiden and London, 1905),
3–4.
32
Ibn Isfandiyār, Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, ed. ʿAbbās Iqbāl, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1941), 1: 165. See also
Browne, Translation, 109.

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300, or possibly even seven at any given time; their identity as abdāl are unknown, and
they are instrumental in maintaining the order of the universe.33
As an early Companion and second of the Rightly Guided Caliphs who lead the
nascent Muslim umma, ʿUmar I’s piety is richly attested to in Islamic tradition.
The story of fiery ʿUmar I’s remarkable conversion to Islam is likewise well known.
His initial antipathy transformed into fervent devotion to Islam and Muḥammad following his conversion, and ʿUmar I is credited in the Islamic tradition with initiating
the collection of the Qurʾan after the death of the Prophet.
Yet Ibn Isfandiyār clearly asserts that it is the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar II who is more
virtuous and just. ʿUmar II, the fifth caliph of the Marwānid branch of the Umayyad
dynasty, has a mixed image in the historical sources. His propensity for luxury in his
youth is inverted into piety and humility later in life. Earlier in his career he was governor of Medina, where he was educated and mingled with pious figures and muh ̣addithūn.34 ʿUmar II is best known for his fiscal policies, and his image in the sources is
not one that is obviously more pious than that of his famous ancestor and namesake.
On the contrary, it is from ʿUmar I that ʿUmar II often draws legitimacy, since ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s mother, Umm ʿĀsim, was the granddaughter of ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb.
Sectarian Dreams and Local Legitimation
In the dream the reputations for piety and justice are inverted. Why is the second of
the Rightly Guided Caliphs, the fiery convert ʿUmar I, credited with initiating the collection of the Qurʾan, seated in a rank below the Umayyad ruler ʿUmar II, the caliph
with a mixed reputation descending from a dynasty that is often reviled in the Muslim
sources as nepotistic and with a penchant for luxury?
That ʿUmar I ranks lower than ʿUmar II suggests a sectarian interpretation of the
characters. It is because of ʿUmar II’s justice that he is placed in a seat of honor next to
the Prophet. It is significant that ʿUmar II is the caliph who is credited with repealing
the stridently anti-Shiʿi practice of publicly cursing ʿAlī, Fāt ̣ima, Ḥ asan, and Ḥ usayn.
Ibn Isfandiyār lauds ʿUmar II’s piety, in addition to his earlier praises of ʿUmar II’s well
known justice, knowledge, superiority, and clemency .35 By claiming that ʿUmar I was
just in an era of justice while ʿUmar II was just in an era of injustice and tyranny (“berūzegār jūr o zulm”36 ), Ibn Isfandiyār credits ʿUmar II with persevering in a hostile
and anti-Shiʿi climate of tyranny and therefore being more just.
The dream narrative reflects several key themes that Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes in
the larger narrative of Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān: the historical independence of Tabaristan,
the importance of Shiʿi imams in the area, and the imams of Tabaristan as the local
exemplars and interpreters of the faith who exercise religious authority and guidance.
Alids, Sayyids, and the family of the Prophet are integral components of Ibn Isfan33

Ibid.
P.M. Cobb, “ʿUmar (Ii) b.ʿAbdal-ʿAzīz,” EI2.
35
Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1: 164; Browne, Translation, 108.
36
Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1: 165; Browne, Translation, 109.
34

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diyār’s Islamic narrative for Tabaristan. Anecdotes about Sufis, Sayyids, and other
notable Muslims set a tone of Alid piety and emphasis on the Shiʿi tradition. The
living fadāʾil of Tabaristan—princes, patricians, rulers (such as the Ispahbads),
notables (maʿārif), ascetics, writers, physicians (atubbāʾ), astronomers (munajjamān),
philosophers (hukamāʾ), poets, and sayyids—are the human counterparts to the physical excellences of Tabaristan. In addition to the emphasis on the pre-Islamic Persian
nobility and the Islamic lineage of Sayyids that forms the backbone of the elite and the
ruling classes of Tabaristan, Ibn Isfandiyār highlights the magnanimity of the local
patricians and rulers.
In the centuries prior to Ibn Isfandiyār, various Shiʿi communities had a strong presence in the region of Tabaristan. Along with Qum, Tabaristan served as a refuge for
Alids fleeing Abbasid persecution.37 Arab governors contributed to the spread of
Sunni Islam in Tabaristan in the second/eighth century, but the presence of Alid
rulers in Daylaman contributed to the Zaydi influence.38 Abū Hātim, who is credited
with converting many locals in Tabaristan, noted around 313/925 that the region was
“a sanctuary for numerous ʿAlids who had fled the ʿAbbasids,” and converted many in
Daylam and Gilan.39
It is not clear if the origin of the dream is Imāmī, Ismāʿīlī, or Zaydī Shiʿi.40 The
overall tenor of Ibn Isfandiyār’s text is Shiʿi in his focus on the Shiʿa imams of the
region as legitimate leaders and authorities. The presence of Zaydī imams in Tabaristan and the Caspian region suggests the possibility of Zaydī influence on the dream
narrative.41 That the narrative includes ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb ranking among the abdāl
37
Andrew Newman, The Formative Period of Twelver Shiʿism: Hadith as Discourse Between Qum and
Baghdad (Richmond, 2000), 35.
38
M.S. Khan traces the beginning of Alid claimants taking refuge in Daylaman to Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh
b. Ḥ asan, a great-grandson of al-Ḥ asan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭ ālib, who took refuge in Daylaman in 175/791 to
escape Abbasid persecution after two of his brothers were executed. More Alid sayyids migrated to Tabaristan in the mid to late second/eighth century from the Hijaz, Syria, and Iraq. Khan argues that Alid rulership in Tabaristan was critical to spreading the Zaydī madhhab in the south Caspian regions and that
Zaydism was already introduced in the South Caspian by the mid ninth century. M.S. Khan, “The
Early History of Zaydī Shīʿīsm in Daylamān and Gīlān,” in Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, ed.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran, 1977), 257–60, 263, 264.
39
Abū Hātim converted Asfār b. Shirawahy (d. 319/931) to Ismāʿīlīsm. Abū Hātim also converted
Mardāwīj b. Ziyār (d. 323/935), who rebelled against Asfār b. Shirawahy and then founded the
Ziyarid state with his capital at Rayy. Farhad Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge,
1990), 120–21, 165.
40
During this period the Nizari Ismāʿīlīs (or Eastern Ismāʿīlīs), led by Ḥ asan-i Sabbāḥ (d. 518/1124),
established themselves in the Caspian region and “founded a vigorous state,” with its center located in the
mountain fortress of Alamūt in the Caspian region, but the Nizārī state collapsed in the mid seventh/
thirteenth century. After about a century of underground developments, Ismāʿīlī movement clearly
appeared after the middle of the third/ninth century. Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs, 2, 105.
41
On the Alid influence and Caspian Zaydī community in the region, see Wilferd Madelung, “Abū
Isḥāq al-Ṣābī on the Alids of Tabaristān and Gīlān,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26, no. 1
(January 1967): 17–57. On the geography of the Tabaristan region, see G.E. LeStrange, The Lands of
the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, From the Moslem Conquest to the Time
of Timur (Cambridge, 1930), 7, 173, 175, 368–76.

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in the seat of honor of the prophetic mission suggests that it is not vehemently Shiʿi,
because it acknowledges that ʿUmar b. al-Khat ̣t ̣āb—regarded by the Shiʿa as one of
the usurpers of the caliphate from ʿAlī—is seated in an elevated position. ʿUmar b.
al-Khat ̣t ̣āb’s position is lowered in comparison to his namesake, but he is not denigrated or condemned.
Ibn Isfandiyār states that in Khwarazm, he heard one Nidhām al-Dīn Samʿānī
speaking at the minbar about this dream. It is unclear who this Nidhām al-Dīn
Samʿānī is based on the information that Ibn Isfandiyār supplies. However, Khwarazm
is not known for particularly Shiʿi sentiment during Ibn Isfandiyār’s era in the sixth/
twelfth century. On the contrary, Bosworth argues “Khwārazm became, like Khurasān
and Transoxania, a bastion of Sunni orthodoxy and scholarship,” and “one manifestation of the orthodoxy of Khwārazm was, according to Ibn Fadlān, the customary
cursing of ʿAlī at the end of the daily prayers.”42 The persistence of Zoroastrianism
or Christianity in Khwarazm does not explain the Shiʿi bent to the dream narrative,
and neither does the influence of the Sunni Ghaznavids nor the Sunni Seljuks.
Religious Authority and Fiscal Autonomy
The argument for religious legitimacy in Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān is more than merely
theoretical. Ibn Isfandiyār’s emphasis on religious authority goes hand in hand with
assertion of local political and fiscal autonomy. Ibn Isfandiyār chronicles the history
of the dynasties of Washmgīr and Buwayh from their ascendancy to their establishment as the local rulers and simultaneously underscores the Shiʿi elements of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār documents Tabaristan’s historical unruliness and frequent
uprisings against external control and the allegedly Shiʿi stance of the Abbasid
caliphs, including Harūn al-Rashīd and his son al-Maʾmūn. Into his narrative Ibn
Isfandiyār blends various pro-Alid sentiments that bolster the Shiʿa and the religious
credentials of Tabaristan. Ibn Isfandiyār also documents the Talibi Sayyids who ruled
Tabaristan. Descendants of ʿAlī are portrayed as the true custodians of religion and the
guardians and rulers of Tabaristan.
In Ibn Isfandiyār’s account, the presence of religious notables and authorities in
Tabaristan justifies the righteous fiscal and administrative localism. The region’s political and fiscal independence reinforces the image of Tabaristan as a community set
apart and a haven for the Shiʿa. Ibn Isfandiyār presents the relationship of the region
to the central state as a contentious one: the state seeks control, while the region boils
over with righteous indignation over attempts at central control. Frequently the
implicit relationship between religious autonomy and administrative and fiscal
freedom rises to the fore: religious authority and pious heritage are coupled with a
fierce localism and assertion of fiscal and political independence.
The meaning of the dream about the two ʿUmars is clear when we consider that Ibn
Isfandiyār paints Tabaristan as a particularly fractious region, where demands for fiscal
C.E. Bosworth, “K hWĀrazm,” EI2.

42

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Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan 299

autonomy and claims of religious authority reinforced the legitimacy of the region’s
independence. According to Ibn Isfandiyār, a long-simmering revolt came to a
brutal climax during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harūn al-Rashīd, who considers
the Tabaristan revolt and slaughter justified on the basis that the people of Tabaristan
revolted against an unjust governor.43 The narrative vindicates the Alids of Tabaristan.
Even the caliph, whose forces were slaughtered, acknowledges and confirms the legitimacy of the Tabaristanis.
When we look to other sources, however, we see a different picture. Ṭ abarī’s terse
account of the revolt in 185/801–802 includes no inkling that Harūn approved of or
condoned the Tabaristanis’ slaughter of his governor. Instead, Ṭ abarī simply notes
that the people of Tabaristan killed the governor of that province, Mahrūyah alRāzī, and that Harūn al-Rashīd appointed Abdullāh b. Saʿīd al-Harashī as his replacement.44 There is nothing to suggest that Harūn was pleased with the disintegration of
the Abbasid empire.
As the long fingers of empire lost their grip on their domains, particularly on the
physical peripheries that lay hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the
seat of power in Baghdad, Harūn al-Rashīd faced revolts along many fronts. The
Abbasid caliphate increasingly lost its administrative effectiveness, and the centralized
power of the caliphate gave way to political fragmentation. In the century to come,
local dynasts such as the Daylamis rose to power in Khurasan. Though they nominally
acknowledged fealty to the Abbasid caliph, they functioned as independent dynasts
upon whom the caliph relied to maintain a modicum of control and fiscal authority.
The dynamics of power were constantly contested and negotiated, as lord and vassal
maintained a balance of power that was at times marked by collaboration and at others
by violent refusal to cooperate.
The dream elevates ʿUmar II over ʿUmar I because ʿUmar II treated the Shiʿa better
than his predecessor, and the welfare of the Shiʿa is one of Ibn Isfandiyār’s major concerns. Given the broader context of Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, dreams are one signal of Shiʿi
authority and legitimacy. Dreams complement akhbār and other narratives through
which Ibn Isfandiyār emphasizes the region’s historical independence, the importance
of Shiʿi imams in the area, and the imams of Tabaristan as the local exemplars and
interpreters of the faith who exercise religious authority and guidance. The argument
for religious legitimacy is entwined with claims for the fiscal and political autonomy of
Tabaristan.

43
The Qārinid prince Wandād-Hurmuzd, along with the Ispahbad Sharwīn the Bāwandid, revolted
against the caliph’s armies in 165/781. The armed confrontation began during the reign of the third
Abbasid caliph Muḥammad ibn Mans ̣ūr al-Mahdī (r. 158–169/775–85) and continued, as we see in
this story, through and even after the reign of Harūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–93/786–809). Ibn Isfandiyār
recounts that the unruly people of Tabaristan, galvanized and organized by Qārinid prince WandādHurmuzd and his ally in this venture, Sharwīn Bāwand, revolted against the caliph’s forces and killed
his governors. Ibn Isfandiyār, Tabaristān, 1: 196; Browne, Translation, 140–41.
44
Ṭ abarī (d. 923), The History of al-Ṭabarī vol. XXX, 174–5.

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Tārīkh-i Bukhārā
Tārīkh-i Bukhārā is a local history that is a Persian translation of a lost Arabic original.
The Persian text is simultaneously an abridgement of the original Arabic and an
extension of it with new material. Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was originally written in
Arabic by Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Zakarīyā ibn Khat ̣t ̣āb ibn Sharīk alNarshakhī from the village of Narshakh in the vicinity of Bukhara, who dedicated
it to the Samanid amir Nūḥ ibn Nas ̣r (r. 331–43/943–54) in 332/943 or 944. The
book was translated into Persian by Abū Nas ̣r Aḥmad al-Qubavī in 522/1128–29
because, as he claims in his translation, people did not want to read the Arabic, and
because his friends asked him to translate it into Persian. Qubavī extended the time
covered to the year 365/975. The Persian translation was then abridged in 574/
1178–79 by Muḥammad ibn Zufar ibn ʿUmar, who also added to the work from
other texts.45
When Narshakhī composed the text in Arabic and dedicated it to the Samanid
amir Nūḥ ibn Nas ̣r at the beginning of that amir’s reign, Bukhara and the Samanid
court were in a state of crisis. Nas ̣r b. Aḥmad, who was Nūḥ ibn Nas ̣r’s father, was
influenced by the Ismāʿīlī dāʿīs and converted to Ismāʿīlī Shiʿism at the end of his
life.46 This inspired a backlash, in which Abū al-Tayyib al-Musʿabī, who was Nas ̣r
b. Aḥmad’s vizier, and some others were killed. After his father’s death, Nūḥ ibn
Nas ̣r attempted to reverse the course of Ismāʿīlī ascension two years into his reign
(r. 331–43/943–54) and purged the dāʿīs and killed Ismāʿīlī converts. However,
there continued to be mistrust of the Ismāʿīlī and their daʿwa and suspicion at the
court of who might have Ismāʿīlī sympathies.47
Narshakhī states that his work will contain not just information about fadāʾil but
also about the traditions on the superior qualities of Bukhara, which are transmitted
from the Prophet and his Companions.48 Narshakhī says he will limit the men he
covers in this book because mentioning all of the notables is too extensive a task
and “the group which we have mentioned are among those of whom the Prophet
said, ‘The learned men of my faith are (equal) to the prophets of the sons of
Israel’.”49

45

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar Narshakhī, The History of Bukhara, translated from a Persian
abridgement of the Arabic original by Narshakhī, ed. and trans. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge, MA,
1954), xii.
46
The dāʿī credited with this is Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Nasafī (or al-Nakhshabī). He was executed
by Nūḥ ibn Nas ̣r in Bukhara in 332/943 soon after Nūḥ became Amir following his father’s death.
Daftary, Ismā‘īlīs, 122–3.
47
Luke Treadwell, “Shāhānshāh and al-Malik al-Muʾayyad: The Legitimation of Power in Sāmānid
and Būyid Iran,” in Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd Madelung,
ed. Farhad Daftary and Josef W. Meri (London and New York, 2003), 318–19.
48
Narshakhī, Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, ed. Mudarris Razavī (Tehran, 1972), 3–4; Frye, History, 3–4.
49
Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 7; Frye, History, 6.

Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan 301

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Legitimating a Local Qurʾan Recitation
It is in this context that we return to the curious story about the Prophet Muḥammad
visiting the city of Bukhara in a dream of one of the city’s denizens. Narshakhī posits a
powerful form of non-biological lineage and heirship to the Prophet by tying the city
of Bukhara to the Prophet through a dream. Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ al-Bukhārī was
amongst the most prominent denizens of the city of Bukhara. Of the several anecdotes
and praiseworthy stories about Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ al-Bukhārī, the most interesting is that of his interaction with the Prophet. Narshakhī describes him as “an ascetic
(zāhid) as well as a man of knowledge (ʿālim),” who “went from Bukhara to Baghdad
and became a student of Imām Muḥammad Ḥ asan [or perhaps Ḥ usayn] Shaibānī …
He was one of the honored teachers of Bukhara.”50
There is some confusion about Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ al-Bukhārī’s identity. His
name was either Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar (known by his kunya Abū Ḥ afs ̣ and who had many
followers), or perhaps Abū Ḥ afs ̣ Aḥmad ibn Ḥ afs ̣ ibn Zarqān ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Jarr
al-ʿAjilī al-Bukhārī, who was born in 150/767. Alternatively, he may even be ʿUmar
ibn Maslama al-Haddād, who died about 264/877.51 According to Narshakhī,
He died in 217/832 and his ashes are by the new gate which is well known. It is a
place where prayers are answered. The mound is called the hill of Khwāja Imām
Abū Ḥ afs ̣. There are mosques and monastery-cells there. Adjoining it live attendants. The people consider that earth blessed.52
Despite the confusion in the texts about his identity, what is evident is that Khwāja
Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ was one of the notable scholars and ascetics in Bukhara during his era.
His acknowledged piety is the source for his encounter with the Prophet in dreams. A
composite identity Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ need not be problematic if we read this
dream account as social history. Narshakhī claims:
It is related from Muhammad ibn Salām Baikandī,53 who was an ascetic and
scholar, that in a dream [“goft ke be kwāb dīdam”]54 he had seen the Prophet
[may God give him mercy and peace], in Bukhārā, in the bazaar of Kharqan.
The area from the beginning of the quarter of the Magians to the section of the
dihqāns, was called the bazaar of Kharqan in olden times. He said he saw the
Prophet sitting on that same camel, which is mentioned in tradition, with a
white cap on his head [“kulāh-e safīd bar sar nehād”]. A large crowd was standing
before him showing delight at the coming of the Prophet. They said, “Where will
50
Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 77–81; Frye, History, 56–9. Mudarris Razavī notes that another manuscript
lists the imam’s name as Muḥammad Ḥ usayn Shaibānī.
51
Frye, Bukhara, 139–40, notes 203–5.
52
Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79–80; Frye, History, 58.
53
See Frye, History, 139–40, note 212.
54
Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79.

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we lodge the Prophet (may God bless him)?” Then they lodged him in the house of
Khwāja Imam Abū Hafs. (He said) he saw the Khwāja Abū Hafs sitting before the
Prophet and reading the Book. For three days the Prophet remained in the house of
Abū Hafs, while he read the Book and the Prophet listened. In those three days he
never once corrected him, for all was correct. Today the home of the Khwāja does
not exist, although several times people re-built it; but traces of it still remain. His
prayer-cell also remains in that house, and prayers are answered there.55
The dream both bestows legitimacy on the dreamer, the man who appears in the
dream, and to Bukhara and its religious practices. Sites of holiness both bestow and
receive meaning through dreams. The implication of the dream is that the dream
occurred because Bukhara is blessed; the virtuousness of Bukhara and its denizens
causes the dream to be dreamed in Bukhara and about Bukhara. Muḥammad
appears in the bazaar of Bukhara—no sacred place—and lodges with a local man,
Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣. The dream sanctions the reading of the Qurʾan by
Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ as legitimate. Furthermore, Muḥammad ibn Salām Baikandī,
the dreamer, is authenticated as good Muslim who has a dream about the Prophet,
which connects him to the prophetic legacy.
Proximal to this dream and the socio-political context of Bukhara, in geography and
chronology, is the Samarqand Codex of the Qurʾan. The codex allegedly dates from the
era of ʿUthmān but legend brings it to Samarqand in the latter half of the fifteenth
century.56 This Samarqand Codex records peculiarities in the Qurʾan. Jeffery and Mendelsohn documented the orthographic particularities of the Samarqand Codex, the composition of which they placed in Iraq and probably Kufa in the third/ninth century.57
Working off the photographic reproduction published in 1905, Mendelsohn first published a study of the lost original codex in 1940, and Mendelsohn and Jeffery elaborated
on the orthographical particularities of the codex in their 1942 article.58
It may be that during the tenth century (when Tārīkh-i Bukhārā was composed in
Arabic by Narshakhī) or during the twelfth century (when Abū Nas ̣r Aḥmad alQubavī translated the work into Persian) that the reading of the Qurʾan common
55

This is Frye’s translation. Frye, History, 57–8; Narshakhī, Bukhārā, 79–80.
The legend of the codex is that it belonged to the third caliph ʿUthmān and was the Qurʾan he was
reading when he was murdered. However, other codices also boast the same pedigree, all purportedly
showing ʿUthmān’s blood on its pages. The codex was given as a gift to a discipline of Khōja Akhrār
—who apparently lived in Tashkent during the second half of the fifteenth century and was perhaps a
Naqshabandī pīr, and whose name was Ubaidallah—when his disciple cured an unspecified caliph in
Constantinople with a prayer taught to him by Khōja Akhrār. The codex was moved from Tashkent
to Samarqand when Khōja Akhrār built his mosque in Samarqand. A. Jeffery and I. Mendelsohn,
“The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur’ān Codex,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 62, no.
3 (September 1942): 175–6.
57
Jeffery and Mendelsohn, “The Orthography of the Samarqand Qur’ān Codex,” 175–95. Jeffery and
Mendelsohn compare the orthography of the Samarqand Codex against a study published by Shebunin in
1901 of an ancient Qurʾan codex in Cairo.
58
I. Mendelsohn, “The Columbia University Copy of the Samarqand Kufic Qur’an,” The Moslem
World 30, no. 4 (October 1940): 375–8.
56

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in Bukhara differed from Qurʾan readings elsewhere. Perhaps not only the ulama, but
anyone with a vested interest in the legitimacy and prestige of Bukhara as an Islamic
city—including its Samanid and other later rulers—felt the need to defend and authenticate the reading of the Qurʾan common in Bukhara as a legitimate one.
The dream related about Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣ describes him reading the Qurʾan
before the Prophet for three days. The statement that the Prophet did not once in
those three days correct Abū Ḥ afs ̣ signifies that the Prophet accepted the recitation
of the Qurʾan common in Bukhara. The dream authenticates the local version of
the Qurʾan in Bukhara. This type of religious knowledge, legitimated in a dream, authenticates the authority of the dreamer (Muḥammad ibn Salām Baikandī) the pious
exemplar seen in the dream (Khwāja Imām Abū Ḥ afs ̣), as well as the religious practices
generally and specifically the reading of the Qurʾan in Bukhara. By extension, this
dream sanctions and sanctifies the city of Bukhara itself and the learning of the religious sciences, such as the hadith and Qurʾan, that occurs in the city.
By dreaming the Prophet into Bukhara and into an encounter with a notable and pietistic
local scholar, Baikandī and Narshakhī also confer onto his city a connection with the
Prophet that transcends the boundaries of time and waking consciousness. In the story
above, considering the authoritativeness of dreams, the Prophet came to Bukhara through
the liminal space of a dream. In tying the city of Bukhara to the legacy of the Prophet
through the dream, Narshakhī argues for a powerful form of non-biological lineage to the
Prophet and his legacy. Narshakhī’s narrative about Muḥammad visiting Bukhara in a
dream transcends the narrow strictures of biological lineage to the Prophet and expands it
to a direct encounter with the Prophet in the far reaches of Khurasan. This episode demonstrates that, at least in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, the author forms links with foundational moments
and characters in Islamic history. Narshakhī binds the Prophet to the city of Bukhara in a
relationship that creates a non-biological prophetic pedigree for the city.
Conclusions
Authors of local histories molded and presented dream narratives in service of their aims
and the larger narrative arc of a particular local history. For Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, this
meant using a dream to affirm the position of the Shiʿa of Tabaristan and condemn
those who have persecuted them. For Tārīkh-i Bukhārā, this meant and using a
dream to bind Bukhara to the Prophet’s legacy and legitimate a local reading of the
Quran. Narshakhī or his later translator strove to embed Bukhara deep into the framework of piety that would resonate on multiple levels, and the narrative captures Narshakhī’s impulse to portray Bukhara as a privileged site in Islamic history.
The literary representations of these dreams are authentic artifacts from the era in
which they were written in that they record the themes, conflicts, and pressing issues
that purportedly permeated the dream lives of the denizens of the early Islamic world.
Dream narratives find new use when they are positioned within a broader framework
that is attuned to regionally conditioned understandings of a localized identity and
encompasses the discourse of literary self-representation.

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