Dreaming of Olive in Islam

The olive is read differently as fruit, as oil and as tree. Eating olives is read as a benefit that is small in quantity and long in effect, and the older readings noted its bitterness before curing: a good thing that has to be worked on before it can be taken. Olive oil, poured or used is the most favourable form, read as blessing, healing and the means by which other things are made usable. Oil spilled or gone rancid turns the reading toward a benefit wasted through neglect rather than taken from you. An olive tree standing in a courtyard or field is read as something inherited: a tree nobody alive planted, since it outlives the one who plants it. Pressing olives is read as effort that yields only after crushing. A tree cut down or burnt is the hardest form, and the interpreters attached it to a line of provision broken rather than to a person.

The Qur'anic basis is explicit and unusually rich. The olive is the blessed tree of the light verse in al-Nur 24:35, its oil almost giving light though untouched by fire. It is sworn by in al-Tin 95:1, and named in al-Mu'minun 23:20 as the tree from Mount Sinai that brings forth oil. Add the plain fact that olive oil was the household's light, food and medicine at once, and the readings above follow without anything being invented.

This is a dream people are pleased to have, so the caution runs the other way: it promises nothing, cures nothing and guarantees no relief. It is not a treatment, not a ruling, and not a sign that a difficulty is ending. A dream is not evidence and is not acted on as though it were. If any dream leaves you frightened rather than glad, the response taught is to seek refuge in Allah from its harm, turn to your other side, and not to speak of it.