The Significance of Seven in Arab Culture
One of the things we need to understand about Arabic culutre is the significance of the number “seven.” This boils over into our understanding of ahadith.
First, a strong disclaimer: Islam has nothing to do with numerology — that is, the study and assignment of arbitrary numbers to the value of letters of the Arabic alphabet — such as the popular “786” which represents “bismillah.”
Nor should numbers be interpreted symbolically or otherwise, unless there is a very good, strong reason for doing so — such as with number seven.