Then We sent them forth, We aroused them from the sleep of obliviousness by their rising from the lying-place of the body and by their knowledge of God and their disengaged souls, that We might know, that is, so that Our knowledge might become manifest in them as loci of manifestation or in the loci of manifestation of others from among all people [as to], which of the two parties, that differed regarding the duration of their tarrying [in the Cave] and [regarding] the calculating of its end, whether those who specified the period of time or those who left the knowledge of that to God [were the better of the two]. For people differ over the period of occultation (ghayba). Some say that one of them emerges every one thousand years, which amounts to a year with God, because of His statement: And truly a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of your counting [Q. 22:47]. Some say every seven hundred years or every one hundred years, which is part of a day, as they said: we have tarried a day, or part of day [Q. 18:19]. But the verifiers, who are correct, are the ones who leave the knowledge thereof to God, like those who said Your Lord knows best how long you have tarried [Q. 18:19], which is why the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, did not specify the moment of the appearance of the Mahdī, peace be upon him, and said, 'They are liars, those who [are given to] specify the moment [of his appearance]'.
