The Cave
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[18:9]
[AND SINCE the life of this world is but a test,] dost thou [really] think that [the parable of] the Men of the Cave and of [their devotion to] the scriptures could be deemed more wondrous than any [other] of Our messages?
* v.9 : This interpolation establishes the elliptically implied connection between the long passage that follows and the preceding two verses.
* Lit., “that the Men of the Cave…were more wondrous…,” etc. – the implication being that the allegory or parable based on this story is entirely in tune with the ethical doctrine propounded in the Qur’ān as a whole, and therefore not “more wondrous” than any other of its statements. – As regards the story of the Men of the Cave as such, most of the commentators incline to the view that it relates to a phase in early Christian history – namely, the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Decius in the third century. Legend has it that some young Christians of Ephesus, accompanied by their dog, withdrew into a secluded cave in order to be able to live in accordance with their faith, and remained there, miraculously asleep, for a great length of time (according to some accounts, referred to in verse 25 of this sūrah, for about three centuries). When they finally awoke – unaware of the long time during which they had lain asleep – they sent one of their company to the town to purchase some food. In the meantime the situation had changed entirely: Christianity was no longer persecuted and had even become the official religion of the Roman Empire. The ancient coin (dating from the reign of Decius) with which the young man wanted to pay for his purchases immediately aroused curiosity; people began to question the stranger, and the story of the Men of the Cave and their miraculous sleep came to light.
As already mentioned, the majority of the classical commentators rely on this Christian legend in their endeavour to interpret the Qur’anic reference (in verses 9-26) to the Men of the Cave. It seems, however, that the Christian formulation of this theme is a later development of a much older oral tradition – a tradition which, in fact, goes back to pre-Christian, Jewish sources. This is evident from several well-authenticated ahādīth (mentioned by all the classical commentators), according to which it was the Jewish rabbis (ahbār) of Medina who induced the Meccan opponents of Muhammad to “test his veracity” by asking him to explain, among other problems, the story of the Men of the Cave. Referring to these ahādīth, Ibn Kathīr remarks in his commentary on verse 13 of this sūrah: “It has been said that they were followers of Jesus the son of Mary, but God knows it better: it is obvious that they lived much earlier than the Christian period – for, had they been Christians, why should the Jewish rabbis have been intent on preserving their story, seeing that the Jews had cut themselves off from all friendly communion with them [i.e., the Christians]?” We may, therefore, safely assume that the legend of the Men of the Cave – stripped of its Christian garb and the superimposed Christian background – is, substantially, of Jewish origin. If we discard the later syncretic additions and reduce the story to its fundamentals – voluntary withdrawal from the world, age-long “sleep” in a secluded cave and a miraculous “awakening” after an indeterminate period of time – we have before us a striking allegory relating to a movement which played an important role in Jewish religious history during the centuries immediately preceding and following the advent of Jesus: namely, the ascetic Essene Brotherhood (to which, as I have pointed out in note 42 on 3:52, Jesus himself may have belonged), and particularly that of its branches which lived in self-imposed solitude in the vicinity of the Dead Sea and has recently, after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, come to be known as the “Qumran community.” The expression ar-raqīm occurring in the above Qur’ān-verse (and rendered by me as “scriptures”) lends strong support to this theory. As recorded by Tabarī, some of the earliest authorities – and particularly Ibn ‘Abbās – regarded this expression as synonymous with marqūm (“something that is written”) and hence with kitāb (“a writ” or “a scripture”); and Rāzī adds that “all rhetoricians and Arabic philologists assert that ar-raqīm signifies [the same as] al-kitāb.” Since it is historically established that the members of the Qumran community – the strictest group among the Essenes – devoted themselves entirely to the study, the copying, and the preservation of the sacred scriptures, and since they lived in complete seclusion from the rest of the world and were highly admired for their piety and moral purity, it is more than probable that their mode of life made so strong an impression on the imagination of their more worldly co-religionists that it became gradually allegorized in the story of the Men of the Cave who “slept” – that is, were cut off from the outside world – for countless years, destined to be “awakened” after their spiritual task was done.
But whatever the source of this legend, and irrespective of whether it is of Jewish or Christian origin, the fact remains that it is used in the Qur’ān in a purely parabolic sense: namely, as an illustration of God’s power to bring about death (or “sleep”) and resurrection (or “awakening”); and, secondly, as an allegory of the piety that induces men to abandon a wicked or frivolous world in order to keep their faith unsullied, and of God’s recognition of that faith by His bestowal of a spiritual awakening which transcends time and death.