When the Engineer Appears: Ibnu Sirin's Warning

 

Fikir Lestari

Classical Islamic dream interpretation does not function as psychology in the modern sense, nor as social critique in a direct, programmatic way. It operates symbolically, reading professions and objects as signs of underlying modes of being and acting in the world. Within this symbolic universe, the appearance of certain figures carries ambivalent or even ominous meanings—not because the figure is morally evil, but because of what it represents when detached from its proper place in the hierarchy of knowledge.

One such figure is the muhandis (engineer, architect, surveyor). In several Arabic dream-interpretation manuals attributed to the tradition of Ibn Sīrīn (d. 110/728), the muhandis is associated with ruin or destruction. This interpretation has often puzzled modern readers, especially in an age that celebrates engineering and technical expertise as unambiguous goods. To understand the symbolism, one must first grasp how classical Islamic thought understood knowledge, order, and intervention.

The muhandis as a symbolic figure

In pre-modern Islamic usage, muhandis did not signify a narrowly specialized technocrat in the modern STEM sense. The term derives from handasa, meaning measurement, proportioning, setting limits, and determining spatial order. The muhandis thus symbolizes a mode of knowing that is calculative, interventionist, and corrective. He measures what exists, identifies deviation, and seeks to realign reality with an abstract order.

In itself, this mode of knowing was not rejected. Islamic civilization produced accomplished engineers, architects, and mathematicians, from Banū Mūsā to al-Jazarī. However, such practical arts were traditionally situated below hikmah (wisdom) and ethical judgment, not above them. Knowledge was hierarchical, not flat. As al-Ghazālī insists, the danger lies not in particular sciences, but in mistaking their scope and authority (al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn).

Dream symbolism reflects this hierarchy. When a muhandis appears as a dominant or ominous figure, the symbol points to excessive reliance on calculation and imposed order, detached from moral, spiritual, or organic considerations. Destruction enters the interpretation not because engineering builds nothing, but because it can dismantle what it does not fully understand.

Why destruction, not construction?

Three symbolic logics help explain why ruin is associated with the muhandis.

First, engineering intervenes rather than contemplates. Unlike the jurist (faqīh) or sage (ḥakīm), whose task is interpretation and discernment, the engineer alters the world directly. Intervention without wisdom risks unintended consequences. Classical thought repeatedly warns that action guided solely by technique can disturb balances it cannot perceive (Nasr, 1968).

Second, measurement abstracts reality. To measure is to reduce qualitative complexity into quantities. While abstraction is necessary for building and calculation, it inevitably omits dimensions of meaning, custom, and lived experience. When abstraction becomes dominant rather than instrumental, the result is flattening. In dream language, this flattening appears as loss, collapse, or ruin.

Third, imposed order can erase organic order. Islamic thought shares with Aristotelian philosophy a distinction between natural order and artificial imposition. What grows organically carries an internal logic; what is forcibly rectified may lose resilience. Excessive straightening—literal or metaphorical—can destroy structures that were quietly functional. Ibn Khaldūn later makes a parallel argument when he warns that over-administration and excessive rational control hasten civilizational decay (Muqaddimah).

Thus, the muhandis symbolizes not evil intent, but overreach: technique acting beyond its rightful domain.

From dream symbol to civilizational analogy

It would be historically incorrect to claim that Ibn Sīrīn or early dream interpreters were critiquing modern STEM society. The industrial-technological order did not yet exist. However, symbols often outlive their immediate context. When read analogically rather than literally, the muhandis becomes an uncannily prescient figure for modernity’s dominant epistemology.

Modern societies increasingly organize themselves according to:

metrics and quantification,

efficiency and optimization,

technical feasibility as the primary criterion of decision-making.

In universities, this manifests as the privileging of STEM outputs, rankings, and measurable impact, while philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics are marginalized as “non-productive.” In governance, policy is justified through models, data, and technical expertise, often insulated from moral or cultural judgment. In architecture and planning, human experience is frequently subordinated to efficiency, compliance, and performance metrics.

This is not engineering serving civilization; it is civilization reorganized according to the logic of engineering.

Here, the classical symbol becomes intelligible as a warning: when the logic of the muhandis becomes hegemonic, destruction follows—not necessarily as physical collapse, but as loss of meaning, resilience, and human coherence. Jacques Ellul later described this condition as the “autonomy of technique,” where technical means dictate ends rather than serve them (Ellul, 1964). Heidegger similarly warned that modern technology enframes reality (Gestell) as mere resource, obscuring deeper modes of revealing (Heidegger, 1977).

Conclusion

The dream interpretation that associates the muhandis with destruction is not anti-science, anti-engineering, or anti-knowledge. It is a symbolic articulation of a perennial insight: technique is powerful but insufficient to govern meaning. When calculation displaces wisdom, when intervention overrides judgment, and when abstraction claims total authority, societies become efficient yet brittle.

Read carefully, the classical dream symbol does not reject engineering. It places it—firmly and wisely—back in its proper place.

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References

al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid. Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn. Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth.

Ibn Khaldūn. Al-Muqaddimah. Trans. Franz Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Ibn Sīrīn (attributed). Kitāb Taʿbīr al-Ruʾyā (various editions).

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Science and Civilization in Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Knopf, 1964.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.