Mausoleum of Ibn Sirin .. Dreams lie in ancient Egypt

Doaa Abdel Latif-Cairo

The old man sticks to the glass barrier, accusing them of prayers and holding a branch of mint with her right hand waving to the owner of the mausoleum, and once she finishes her ritual, she begins to move in order to distribute the smell of musk to the visitors and then leave quietly.

So every week, 66-year-old Awatif Ahmed, after Friday prayers, comes to the tomb of Imam Muhammad ibn Sirin, reads prayers and shares the rest of the visitors with what she thinks.

Dozens more flock to the shrine of Ibn Sirin, one of the leading Islamic scholars, who is the most famous interpreter of dreams in Islamic history.

Small as a dream

In white and green, the walls of the tomb of Ibn Sirin, located on one of the corner of the famous Ashraf Street in the Khalifa district of Cairo's Old Cairo district, have been painted.

The shrine's space is as small as a short dream, and in the center of the maqam dome is covered with green and surrounded by a wooden box punctuated by a glass panel, which can pass through the hands of visitors to touch the maqam and put flowers and mint branches.

The ceiling is made of wood, on the walls are Quranic verses and prayers and a small box of vows, and there is an iron window through which the maroon overlooking Al-Ashraf Street on the shrine.

A simple Egyptian imam working as a builder, he says that he visits the shrine every Friday after praying at the Sayyida Nafisa mosque, which is not far from the beginning of Ashraf Street.

He says he is blessed with "Mawlana". He suffices the evil of annoying dreams. He is convinced that visiting the shrine has an active role in realizing his happy dreams.

Years ago, there was a guard of the shrine, nicknamed the "servant of the maqam", called by the people of the region, "Sheikh Nabil" and was responsible for interpreting the dreams of visitors.

Imam returns to say: "Sheikh Nabil read a lot in the books of interpretation of dreams. It has a dream to interpret, and some say that he had the ability of God to interpret dreams derived as a gift from the owner of the shrine, God knows the owner and the servant in the hands of God now."

The visitors kiss

The seventy-year-old Mohammed Hussein, a son of Ashraf Street, says that he grew up and raised in the shrine of Ibn Sirin, as long as he played in his youth with his peers in front of the shrine and continued to visit to bless and serve the righteous followers and their pioneers.

He says that the shrine comes to visitors from different provinces and even many visitors from different countries, explaining that the large turnout is during the famous births, which attracts tens of thousands of lovers of the righteous guardians of God and the household.

These births include the birth of Mrs. Nafisa, Ms. Sakina, and Ms. Ruqaya, whose shrines are close to the shrine of Ibn Sirin.

There are those who refer to Ibn Sirin as one of the righteous saints of God without even knowing his name, such as Basma, who came with her mother to visit the "tombs of the Awliya" in Ashraf Street and passed on the son of Sirin to read the chapeau "and we discovered that she does not even know how to pronounce his name."

Basma walked around with her mother around the mausoleum and read al-Fatiha and called in her secret, and when I asked her about the name of the owner of the maqam she did not know, she found people entering to visit and entered with them.

It is noteworthy that Ibn Sirin is notorious for traveling, and some historians believe that the case finally settled in Egypt to be buried in Al-Ashraf Street, which includes the shrines of a number of the family of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and others assert that the burial in Basra, Iraq, and his mausoleum in the building of the shrine of Hassan al-Basri.

No one really knows the place of the burial, but it is certain that many Egyptians are keen to visit the tomb of Ibn Sirin on Ashraf Street, even if his body is not there.