Descriptions of dreams abound in the literatures of the Near East and North Africa. The Prophet Muhammad endowed them with a theological dimension, saying that after him “true dreams” would be the only channel for prophecy. Dreams were often used to support conflicting theological and political arguments, and the local chronicles contain many accounts of royal dreams justifying the advent of new dynasties.

This volume explores the context of these theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum. Some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams being merely stylized expressions of social conventions are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.

This is the first volume of the Ilex Series on Themes and Traditions. The series explores cross-cultural constructs without losing sight of the rich texture of local variations of traditions or beliefs.

Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience?

In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners. He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals’ nocturnal experiences and one culture’s persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice.

Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience?

In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners. He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals’ nocturnal experiences and one culture’s persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice.

The essays in Dreams and Visions in the Bible and Related Literature focus on how the reading community interprets dreams or visions and what is at stake for whom in a dream or vision’s interpretation. Contributors explore the hermeneutics of readership, the relationship between reading and intertextuality, and the interplay of affect and emotion within dreams and visions in religious texts. A variety of methodologies are employed, including rhetorical analysis, critical theory, trauma studies, the analysis of space and society, and the history of emotions. Contributors are Richard J. Bautch, Genevive Dibley, Roy Fisher, Gina Hens-Piazza, Joseph McDonald, Deborah Prince, Jean-François Racine, Andrea Spatafora, and Rodney A. Werline.

Throughout human history people have been driven from their homes by wars, unjust treatment, earthquakes, and hurricanes. The reality of forced migration is not new, nor is awareness of the suffering of the displaced a recent discovery. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that at the end of 2007 there were 67 million persons in the world who had been forcibly displaced from their homes—including more than 16 million people who had to flee across an international border for fear of being persecuted due to race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion.

Driven from Home advances the discussion on how best to protect and assist the growing number of persons who have been forced from their homes and proposes a human rights framework to guide political and policy responses to forced migration. This thought-provoking volume brings together contributors from several disciplines, including international affairs, law, ethics, economics, and theology, to advocate for better responses to protect the global community’s most vulnerable citizens.

Published annually, the journal Dumbarton Oaks Papers was founded in 1941 for the publication of articles relating to Byzantine civilization.

In this issue: John S. Langdon and Stephen W. Reinert, “Speros Vryonis Jr.: 1928–2019”; Abraham Terian, “Monastic Turmoil in Sixth-Century Jerusalem and the South Caucasus: The Letter of Patriarch John IV to Catholicos Abas of the Caucasian Albanians”; Coleman Connelly, “Continued Celebration of the Kalends of January in the Medieval Islamic East”; Victoria Gerhold, “The Legend of Euphratas: Some Notes on Its Origins, Development, and Significance”; Christos Simelidis, “Two Lives of the Virgin: John Geometres, Euthymios the Athonite, and Maximos the Confessor”; Georgios Makris, “Living in Turbulent Times: Monasteries, Settlements, and Laypeople in Late Byzantine Southwest Thrace”; Philipp Niewöhner, “The Significance of the Cross before, during, and after Iconoclasm: Early Christian Aniconism in Constantinople and Asia Minor”; Stefania Gerevini, “Art as Politics in the Baptistery and Chapel of Sant’Isidoro at San Marco, Venice”; Laura Pfuntner, “Between Science and Superstition: Photius, Diodorus Siculus, and ‘Hermaphrodites’”; Baukje van den Berg, “John Tzetzes as Didactic Poet and Learned Grammarian”; Matthew Kinloch, “In the Name of the Father, the Husband, or Some Other Man: The Subordination of Female Characters in Byzantine Historiography”; Levente László, “Rhetorius, Zeno’s Astrologer, and a Sixth-Century Astrological Compendium”; and Stig Simeon R. Frøyshov, “The Early History of the Hagiopolitan Daily Office in Constantinople: New Perspectives on the Formative Period of the Byzantine Rite.”

Published annually, the journal Dumbarton Oaks Papers was founded in 1941 for the publication of articles relating to Byzantine civilization.

In this issue: Margaret Mullet, “Ruth Juliana Macrides: 1949–2019”; Sihong Lin, “Justin under Justinian: The Rise of Emperor Justin II Revisited”; David Gyllenhaal, “Byzantine Melitene and the Social Milieu of the Syriac Renaissance”; Pavel Murdzhev, “The Introduction of the Moldboard Plow to Byzantine Thrace in the Eleventh Century”; Annemarie Weyl Carr, “The Lady and the Juggler: Mary East and West”; Robert S. Nelson, “A Miniature Mosaic Icon of St. Demetrios in Byzantium and the Renaissance”; Esra Akin-Kivanç, “In the Mirror of the Other: Imprints of Muslim–Christian Encounters in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean”; Anna Chrysostomides, “John of Damascus’s Theology of Icons in the Context of Eighth-Century Palestinian Iconoclasm”; Max Ritter, “The Byzantine Afterlife of Procopius’s Buildings”; Jonathan L. Zecher, “Myths of Aerial Tollhouses and Their Tradition from George the Monk to the Life of Basil the Younger”; Nektarios Zarras, “Illness and Healing: Τhe Ministry Cycle in the Chora Monastery and the Literary Oeuvre of Theodore Metochites”; and Aleksandr Andreev, “The Order of the Hours in the Yaroslavl Horologion.”