Dreaming of Apple in Islam

An apple is read by its taste, its number, and how it came to hand. A sweet apple eaten with pleasure is the good reading: a lawful gain, or a desire reaching what it was set on. A sour or bitter apple turns it toward something wanted and then found not worth the wanting. An apple that is sound outside and rotten within was read by the older interpreters as a matter whose appearance and reality differ — a person, an offer, a partnership. Counting apples, or being given several, is read by number: what is gathered rather than what is tasted, so a definite quantity of gain or of children. An apple taken from someone's hand shifts the dream onto that relationship; one picked from a tree is read as a thing obtained by one's own reach. A half-eaten apple, or one shared, has been read as a benefit divided rather than lost.

There is no Qur'anic image of the apple and no Arabic idiom underneath it, and it is worth saying so rather than inventing one — the fruit forbidden in the account of Adam is never named in the Qur'an. What the interpreters connected the apple to is what the fruit itself offers: it is small, whole, countable, held in one hand, and it is judged entirely by a taste you cannot see from outside. A symbol for a wanted thing whose worth is only known after it is taken.

A dream of an apple is not a promise of gain and settles no decision, however tempting it is to read it as approval of something you were already leaning toward. It is not a ruling. The tradition treats the true dream as one kind among several, most of what is seen belonging to the sleeper's own day. If a dream disturbed you, seek refuge in Allah, turn onto your other side, and leave it untold.