While certainly not a sprawling area of research, the subject of the nature, place, role, meaning and understanding of dreams and visions within the Islamic tradition has received a fair amount of treatment within the scholarly literature. Beginning with the explorations published in the comparative volume edited by G.E. von Grunebaum and R. Caillos, The Dream and Human Societies (Berkeley, 1966), and extending through the more recent collective volumes edited by L. Marlow, Dreaming across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands (Boston, 2008) and Ö. Felek and A. Knysh, Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany, 2012), the subject has been explored in some depth within and across a varied range of thematic, temporal, linguistic and topical contexts. In addition to these considerations a series of monographic treatments of the subject have also been published in recent decades. The most important of these studies include the work of J. Katz (Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammad al-Zawâwî, Leiden, 1996), A. Schimmel's rich anthology of Islamic oneiricritical lore Die Träume des Kalifen. Träume und ihre Deutung in der islamischen Kultur (Munich, 1998), J. Lamoreaux's The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany, 2002), and P. Lory's La rêve et ses interpretations en Islam (Paris, 2003). Taken collectively, these studies canvass a variety of topics connected to the general subject of dreams and visions within Islam and when perusing other relevant research, such as the numerous articles of L. Kinberg on the understanding, meaning, and use of dreams and visions in the early and classical periods or the work of Muhammad alZekri on the contemporary culture of dream interpretation in the UAE, it is patently clear just how wide topical treatments of the general subject have been.

That said, the recent contribution to the literature under review here is by no means superfluous. While necessarily treading familiar ground, Sirriyeh's treatment of the subject is clearly formulated, intellectually honest, and capably executed. Arranged into an interrelated series of nine chapters, Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam looks to furnish an illustrated descriptive narrative of the main historical contours of oneirological discourse within Islam from the formative and early periods through to the dawn of the twenty-first century. For obvious reasons, the bulk of this narrative is concerned with the pre-modern period, and in identifying and charting major themes, conceptualizations, interpretive schemata, and discursive practices pertinent to the subject the book devotes its attention to the expected topics. As one might anticipate, the first chapter, entitled “Seeing gods and angels before the rise of Islam” (pp. 9–31) examines the influence of the oneirocritical traditions of Late Antiquity on early Islamic traditions of the same, and the second and third chapters, entitled “The Prophet as model visionary” (pp. 32–57) and “Scholars and saints in the path of the Prophet” (pp. 58–82) respectively, consider the conceptualizations, ambivalent or otherwise, framing expressive understandings of oneiric/visionary knowledge in relation to the prophetic authority of Muhammad and the significance assigned to veridical dreams and visions by religiously authoritative figures. Chapter 4, entitled ‘The dream must be interpreted” (pp. 83–102) moves on to discuss the associative symbology of early Muslim oneirocritical theory, taking note of the anecdotal focus of the discursive dynamics, intertextual or otherwise, that framed classical Islamic dream culture. The most original part of the book, the fifth and six chapters, entitled “Muslims dreaming of Christians, Christians dreaming of Muslims” (pp. 103–17) and “‘And if a woman dreams’” (pp. 118–39), deal with the fraught matter of normativity in the construction of dream-image meaning in both inter- and intra-communal social contexts. Drawing in particular on the cases of the late-sixth/twelfth- and early-seventh/thirteenth-century Sufi teachers Rūzbihān-i Baqlī (d. 606/1209) and Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), chapter 7, entitled “Envisioning God and His Prophet” (pp. 140–57), explores Sufi narratives concerning the appearance of God and the Prophet in dreams, whereas for its part the following chapter, entitled “Contacting the Righteous Dead” (pp. 158–73) considers the appearance of holy personages in dream-visions in general. The final chapter of the book, entitled “Visionary traditions and the impact of modernity” (pp. 174–93) examines attitudes and ideas pertaining to the visionary world in modern Muslim cultural contexts, including issues pertaining to shifting social subjectivities rooted in new media and technologies, coming to the conclusion that while somewhat diminished since the pre-modern period, “belief in the value of dreams and vision … [is] … still strong and acted upon in many instances as a respected means of guidance and foreknowing” (p. 193).

While many of the topics discussed in Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam have been treated elsewhere, the book certainly does fill a need, and through its clear synthetic presentation of major aspects of the nature, place, role, meaning and understanding of dreams and visions within the Islamic tradition, otherwise discussed piecemeal in more narrowly focused monographs, contributions to edited volumes, research articles, and encyclopaedia entries, is a welcome addition to the existing literature. Containing a modicum of endnotes, utilizing a simplified transliteration scheme, and skirting the more specialized scholarly debates and arguments associated with recent research in the area, it should be as approachable for non-specialists looking for comparative data as for students looking to familiarize themselves with the subject. Furthermore, as the only other synthetic treatments of the subject are to be found in Lory's aforementioned La rêve et ses interpretations en Islam and, by way of the exposition of representative themes at least, in Schimmel's aforementioned Die Träume des Kalifen (both of which are curiously missing from the book's bibliography), Sirriyeh's volume renders a needed service to readers who might not otherwise have access to one or both of those works.