The Construction of Gender Symbolism in Ibn S|r|n's and Ibn Sha≠h|n's Medieval Arabic Dream Texts

INTRODUCTORY AND METHODOLOGICAL REMARKS It was years ago when I first bought my Bulaq edition of Arabic dream texts authored by the three canonical interpreters: Ibn S|r|n, Ibn Sha≠ h|n, and al-Na≠ bulus|. In the eighties it was a favorite pastime among some Cairene intellectuals to read such popular classics, a way to converse with and learn more about the past. But what began as a pastime developed into an exercise in cultural and historical probing, a wish to use the dream text as a potential source for examining the cultural assumptions that shape us as social beings. In this article, I propose to use a gender-sensitive reading of selected narratives so as to explore both accepted and undetected cultural constructs of gender, and to examine how the text re-enforces or subverts conventional notions of gender hierarchy. In doing so, a dialogue is established with the text, infusing it with new grounds of sensibility, with memory, and questions that may help us understand the genealogy of cultural assumptions. It is important to bear in mind, however, that although linguistic symbols reflecting a dichotomy between masculinity and femininity may not be remarkable in and of themselves, they do serve as reminders of the underlying connection between the textual or ideological construction of gender and the existing structures of order which constitute the social ground of the text. An interactive relationship between the symbols used in the dream text and its social context is thus expected to be at play. Notions of gender, economic status, age, religion, and sometimes race and color closely intersect in dream imagery, just as they do in the existing social context. And as Toufy Fahd rightly remarks, these texts may be considered as mirrors of society, providing reflections about everyday life in medieval ArabMuslim society that cannot be found in conventional historical texts. Apart from a few recent studies, modern scholars still show little interest in