Avicenna’s account of truthful dreams and prophecy

Record summary

Avicenna discusses dreams, imagination, prophecy, and the soul’s relation to bodily conditions in works including the Shifa and Najat. These passages provide a specific medieval framework for comparing ordinary dreaming, veridical-seeming dreams, visionary cognition, and physiological explanations. They matter because Avicenna often integrates Aristotelian psychology with medical reasoning rather than presenting a simple supernatural claim. The exact wording and interpretation depend on Arabic editions and translations, while later readers sometimes isolate visionary passages from their wider philosophical system.