THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS

The legend of the dormouse in the Koran

Seven sleepers

Young men save themselves from persecution of Christians in a cave where they are sheltered by God for centuries to sleep. So goes the legend of the dormouse. The ancient motif of long sleep, which incidentally also applies to Sleeping Beauty, is also found in the Koran - to bring the idea of resurrection to the young Islamic community.

"You keep them awake while they sleep."

This summary represents an elementary theological question of the time of early Islam - and also of Christianity: that of the truthfulness of the resurrection.

The Legend of the Seven Sleepers

The series Koran explains as a multimedia presentation

They, those who sleep, are the Ashab al-kahf, the companions of the cave. In Christianity, they are known as the "holy dormouse".

It is the tale of seven young men fleeing into a cave for fear of persecution by the Roman emperor. There they fall into a centuries-long sleep, until they awaken at the time of the Christian emperor Theodosius the Second.

When one of the companions with outdated coins is sent to get bread in the city, he is recognized there as a stranger and presented to the ruler. He sees in the reawakening of the seven youths a proof of the resurrection of body and soul.

In this legend, the ancient motif of the "long sleep", which is also found, for example, in Sleeping Beauty, was re-processed. And just as the Christian tradition, the Koran took this story to teach the young Islamic community the idea of ​​the resurrection that is the reward for orthodoxy in Islam.

The statement that one believes they are awake while actually asleep does not only express simultaneity, but also an apparent contradiction: on the one hand the sleepers, neither dead nor alive, on the other hand the viewers who regard them as awake. So, was the resurrection an intermediate stage and had to be interpreted metaphysically, or was it really a kind of waking sleep?

This is the case, for example, of the Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir, reminiscent of the wolf, who opened his eyes during sleep to protect himself from harm. The mystic Rûmî, on the other hand, regards this sleep "with a warm heart and open eyes" as proof of the greatest divine presence.

A sign that the youths were indeed asleep was, for the commentators of the Qur'an, that in the remainder of the verse, it is said, "Whereby we turn them to the right and to the left."

For the mystic Ibn Arabî, however, turning the sleeper corresponds to the recent judgment, in which man's good deeds, to the right, and evil deeds, to the left, are judged.

The entire Koranic legend in the 18th sura covers verses 9 to 26. It is closely related to its Christian model, even though it is fragmentary, as is often the case in the Koran.

Nevertheless, there are deviations: for example, in terms of the number of sleepers and a dog mentioned. Verse 22 says, "They say three with their dog four, and five with their dog six."

The assumption is obvious that the Islamic tradition deliberately wanted to distance itself from the Christian of the seven sleepers. Later Islamic traditions also name groups of up to nine people.

The dog as watchman of the sleepers does not know the Christian legend at all.

The duration of sleep differs. According to Christian tradition, it lasted 190 or 372 years. In verse 25 it says, "And they lingered for 300 years and nine".

Also, the place of action, Ephesus in the Christian version, is not fixed. During the period of Islamic conquest, where there were caves in the newly conquered areas, Islamic pilgrimage sites were created in honor of the cave's companions. Today, however, only Tarsus is of supraregional importance in Turkey.