The Prophet ﷺ said that the dream of a Muslim is one of the forty-six parts of prophethood. That statement is the reason this subject belongs to Islamic scholarship at all — and the reason it needs careful handling rather than the folk treatment it usually receives.
What the Book Establishes First
Before any interpretation, definitions. What the word dream actually means, and the distinction between the types — the true dream that is a form of glad tidings, the dream produced by a person's own thoughts and daily preoccupations, and the disturbing dream that comes from Shaytan.
That distinction is the single most useful thing in the book, because the great majority of dreams fall into the second and third categories and require no interpretation at all. A person who understands this stops looking for meaning in every night's sleep, and stops being frightened by dreams that were never signs.
The Prophet's ﷺ Own Interpretations
The author gathers the dreams that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ interpreted himself. These are the anchor of the whole discipline: they show the method being applied by the one person whose application was certainly correct.
The Etiquette
Substantial attention goes to conduct — the etiquette required of the person who has a dream, and of the person who undertakes to interpret one. This is the part most often ignored and most often needed.
Whom a dream should and should not be related to. What to do on waking from something disturbing. And the seriousness of the responsibility taken on by anyone who interprets for another, since a dream given a meaning tends to follow the meaning it was given.
The Author
Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd-Allah ibn Rashid Al-Bakri (d. 736 AH / 1336 CE) was a well-known scholar of his age, and this is a classical work rather than a modern compilation — which is precisely what a reader on this subject should want.
Related Reading
(7) 
