The ancient Greek Oneirology and the Muslim Interpretation Historical Survey of Two Different Interpretations of Dreams Oneirologi Purba Yunani dan Interpretasi Islam

There is no agreement among psychologists on sources and outcomes of the dreams in human brain during sleep. Secularist scholars of Freudian school of psychoa-nalysis claim that human dreams reflect their highly subconscious libido. Jungian school of kollective Unbewessustes disputes such extreme sexualized opinions and highlights the fact that rather large “collective unconscious” than sexuality is shared by representatives of all human cultures. But even without advanced studies, we can risk to believe that our dreams often predict coming events. Artemidoros Daldianus from Ephesus, the second century CE Hellenistic author of Oneirokritikon believed that dreams are human mind’s mirrors of the future. His magnum opus on the art of interpre-tation of dreams was translated into Arabic by famous Nestorian ophthalmologist Hu-nayn ibn Ishaq (Iohannitus) of Bayt al-Hikmah during the reign of Abbasid caliphs Maymun and Mutawakkil. The Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) often interpreted his own and Sahabah’s dreams with perfect accuracy. In the Qur’an, especially in Surah 12: Yusuf, 36-37, 99-101, the dreams are vehicles of foretelling the future not only of indi-viduals but also of whole nations and states. The paper is written from historical per-spective of the Muslim interpretation of dreams which emphasizes the Islamic examina-tion of human dreams in context of the primary sources to the ancient Greek oneiro-mancy, studied by the Muslim scholars in the early centuries of Islamic Civilization, and their contribution to development of modern oneirology.