THE BOOK OF VISIONS: DREAMS, POETRY, AND PROPHECY IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPT

Extract

Shaykh al-Qusi is a charismatic spiritual leader in Cairo whose followers have been recording their dream visions and waking visions in a handwritten collection since 1997. Drawing on the shaykh's dream-inspired poetry and his followers' vision narratives, I describe the ways in which this community of believers understands the relationship between authorship and authority, as well as between imagination (al-khayamacr;l) and tradition. Dreams and visions do not circumvent idioms of the textual tradition, but in their narrative form they often mirror and reinscribe its genres. Some of the group's vision narratives emulate the face-to-face encounters of the hadith whereas others signify eruptions of a timeless truth from elsewhere, similar to the Quran. Through mirroring the sacred genres, dreams and visions bring believers closer to these texts. Just as dreams are understood through the tradition, the tradition is understood by some through dreams.