The Dream a Companion Almost Didn't Mention

2026-08-22 • Noorani Ilm

In the early days of the community in Madinah, the Muslims had no fixed way to signal when prayer time had arrived. Some suggested a bell, the way Christians summoned their congregations. Others suggested a horn, like the Jewish community, or a fire lit in a visible place. None of it sat right. Then Abdullah ibn Zayd came to the Prophet ﷺ with a dream: a man wearing green robes had approached him carrying a bell. Abdullah asked to buy it, meaning to use it to call people to prayer. The man offered him something better instead — teaching him a specific set of words to call out loud. When Abdullah woke, he went straight to the Prophet ﷺ and told him everything. In a hadith recorded in Sunan Abi Dawud and graded hasan, the Prophet ﷺ told him: "This is a true vision, if Allah wills. Go to Bilal and teach him what you were shown, for he has a more beautiful voice than you." Umar ibn al-Khattab, it turned out, had seen the exact same thing in a dream that same night, and had been hesitant to mention it first.

What the word itself means

The Arabic word adhan comes from a root meaning "to listen" or "to inform" — a public announcement meant to reach anyone within earshot, not a private signal for those already gathered. Bilal, freed from slavery and given a voice the Prophet ﷺ specifically praised, became the first person in history to call it out, and the practice has continued in essentially the same wording for over fourteen centuries since.

What the words actually say

The adhan opens with "Allahu Akbar" — "Allah is Greater" — repeated to open with the single largest claim first: nothing competing for a person's attention that morning is greater than this. It moves to "Ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah" — "I bear witness there is no deity but Allah" — and then "Ash-hadu anna Muhammadar-rasulullah" — "I bear witness Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." Then comes the actual summons: "Hayya 'alas-salah" — "Come to prayer" — and "Hayya 'alal-falah" — "Come to success." The word hayya carries urgency, closer to "hurry" than a polite invitation. The Fajr adhan alone adds one more line, found in no other prayer's call: "As-salatu khayrun minan-nawm" — "Prayer is better than sleep" — spoken at the exact hour that line is hardest to agree with.

A promise for the one calling it alone

The Prophet ﷺ described a reward that doesn't depend on anyone actually showing up. In a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, he ﷺ said that if a shepherd alone with his flock in open land calls the adhan and prays, Allah is pleased with him — and that no jinn, human, or anything else hears the sound of the adhan without testifying for the one who called it on the Day of Judgment. The call was never only for the crowd that gathers because of it. It was described as valuable even when delivered to an empty desert.

The longest necks on the Day of Judgment

A separate hadith recorded in Sahih Muslim describes what's promised to those who regularly perform this role: "The muezzins will have the longest necks among people on the Day of Resurrection." Scholars have read this as an image of prominence and honor — those who spent years calling others to prayer standing out clearly on a day when everyone else is anxious and looking down.

Why the words were never left to human committee

What the story of the bell, the horn, and the dream actually shows is a community trying multiple borrowed solutions before being given something distinctly its own — not designed by any single person's preference, but confirmed through two separate dreams on the same night and endorsed directly by the Prophet ﷺ. Fourteen hundred years later, the exact same words are still called from mosques in every direction, unchanged since the night Abdullah ibn Zayd almost didn't mention what he'd seen.