اصحاب کہف کی بستی اور غار کے تعین کاتنقیدی جائزہ: A Critical Review of the Settlement and Cave of the Companions of Kahf

Abstract

In the Islamic and Christian traditions, the Seven Sleepers, otherwise known as Aṣḥāb al-Kahf, Sleepers of Ephesus and Companions of the Cave is a medieval legend about a group of youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around AD 250 to some 300 years later. So many sites have been attributed to the "Cave of the Seven Sleepers", but none have been archaeologically proven to be the actual site. As the earliest versions of the legend spread from Ephesus, an early Christian catacomb came to be associated with it, attracting scores of pilgrims. On the slopes of Mount Pion (Mount Caelian) near Ephesus (near modern Selçuk in Turkey), the grotto of the Seven Sleepers with ruins of the religious site built over it was excavated in 1926–1928. The excavation brought to light several hundred graves dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. Inscriptions, dedicated to the Seven Sleepers, were found on the walls and in the graves. This grotto is still open to tourists. Other possible sites of the cave of the Seven Sleepers are in Damascus, Syria, and Afşin and Tarsus, Turkey. Afşin is near the antique Roman city of Arabissus, to which the East Roman Emperor Justinian paid a visit. The emperor brought marble niches as gifts from Western Turkey for the site, which are preserved inside the mosque to this day. The site was a Hittite temple, used as a Roman temple and later as a church in Roman and Byzantine times.