ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on conversations about dreams and the universe of the imagination associated with ziyaret, visiting the shrines of saints and examines people’s struggles with ethical questions as well as existential and otherworldly concerns. Both dreams and visits to saint shrines enjoy special significance within Islamic traditions. The chapter describes L. Green’s suggestion to investigate instead, how dreams might offer knowledge, guidance and inspiration, in shaping the present. It also focuses on dreams is an attempt to shift attention from “the observable, material realities to the emergent, the possible, the prophetic, visionary”. The chapter argues that the nature of the shrine space and the kinds of on-going practices and forms of knowledge associated with this universe. The Haci-Bektas shrine highlights the significance of both dreams and shrines in the Alevi Bektashi universe. People’s dream narratives provided a provocative anchor and stimulus for engaging with broader questions about how Islam is experienced and lived in contemporary Turkey.
