Qur'an folio in gold Kufic, 9th c. · Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0

Islam

Tradition·Founded 610 CE·est. ~2 billion worldwide

Islam → 4 branches

Branch
Overview Belief 36How to Live 12Practice 34Stories & Scripture 27Community 11 You × Islam Discussion
Story of Islam

The People of the Cave.

Young men who hid in a cave rather than give up their faith and woke three centuries later, sending one of them into town with a coin nobody would take. The sura is recited by many Muslims every Friday, and the story is shared with Christianity, where it is the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

Add to My Beliefs →
Where it is toldQuran 18
Who appearsThe sleepers, their dog, the city that changed around them
What it teachesThat they hid in a cave to keep their faith and woke three centuries later with a coin nobody would accept
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The People of the Cave appear in sura 18, which many Muslims recite in full every Friday. Young men refuse the idolatry of their city, take refuge in a cave, and are put to sleep for what the text gives as three hundred years and more, with their dog stretched at the entrance. They wake believing they have slept a day or part of a day, and send one into town with an old coin to buy food, which is how the world discovers them. The Quran uses the story to make a point about arguing over details — it lists the disputes about how many there were and dismisses them as guesswork about the unseen — and to introduce the formula that you say nothing about tomorrow without saying if God wills. The same story exists in Syriac Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and shrines claiming the cave are venerated in Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere, sometimes by Christians and Muslims together.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The twenty-one on the beach. The Coptic Orthodox Church Read it in full →
Our Lady of Deliverance, 31 October 2010. The Syriac Catholic Church Read it in full →
The fire, and then the exile. Hinduism Read it in full →
The pegs in his ears. Jainism Read it in full →
The dead will rise. Judaism · core tenet Go deeper →
The resurrection defeated death. Christianity · core tenet Go deeper →

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