Seven Sleepers
A legend of youths who slept centuries in a cave.
The Seven Sleepers, known in Christianity as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and in Islam as Aṣḥāb al-Kahf, is a late antique legend about a group of youths who hid in a cave around 250 AD to escape Roman persecution and emerged many years later. The story appears in the Qur'an in Sura 18 (18:9–26) and has been venerated in Christian tradition since at least the 5th century, with the sleepers recognized as saints in both the Orthodox and Catholic churches.
Quick Facts
- Feast day
- 27 July (Roman Catholic); 4 August, 22 October (Eastern Christianity)
- Venerated in
- Islam
- Catholic Church
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Oriental Orthodox Church
- Canonized date
- Pre-Congregation
Facts from the source article.
Origins and propagation
The earliest known version of the Seven Sleepers story comes from Jacob of Serugh, a Syriac bishop and poet-theologian from Edessa who lived around 450 to 521. He wrote a verse homily on the subject, which relied on an earlier Greek source that no longer exists. That homily was later published in the Acta Sanctorum. The oldest surviving Syriac manuscript copy, MS Saint-Petersburg No. 4, dates to the 5th century, meaning the tale was already circulating in Syriac before Gregory of Tours was born in 538. Another 6th-century Syrian manuscript in the British Museum lists eight sleepers instead of seven. Scholars once argued whether the original was written in Syriac or Greek, but today a Greek origin is widely accepted. A pilgrim account called De situ terrae sanctae, written between 518 and 531, mentions a church in Ephesus dedicated to the sleepers. Gregory of Tours included an outline of the story in his late 6th-century collection Glory of the Martyrs, claiming he heard it from a Syrian interpreter. Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards also contains a version. The most famous Western telling appears in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, written between 1259 and 1266. The legend spread widely, surviving in over 200 manuscripts from the 9th to 13th centuries, in at least nine medieval languages: 104 in Latin, 40 in Greek, 33 in Arabic, 17 in Syriac, six in Ethiopic, five in Coptic, two in Armenian, one in Middle Irish, and one in Old English. Byzantine writer Symeon the Metaphrast referenced it, and it was translated into Sogdian, Persian, Kyrgyz, and Tatar. In the 13th century, the poet Chardri produced an Old French version. The 9th-century Irish calendar Félire Óengusso marks the Seven Sleepers on 7 August. During the Crusades, bones from tombs near Ephesus were taken to Marseille, France, in a large stone coffin, which became a relic at the Abbey of St Victor.
Number and names
Early versions do not all agree on or specify the number of sleepers. Some Jewish circles and the Christians of Najran believed in only three brothers; the East Syriac, five. Most Syriac accounts have eight, including a nameless watcher. A 6th-century Latin text titled Pilgrimage of Theodosius featured seven sleepers with a dog named Viricanus. Bartłomiej Grysa lists at least seven different sets of names. One set includes Maximian, Martinian, Dionisius, John, Constantine, Malchus, and Serapion. Another includes Maximilian, Martinian, Dionisius, John, Constantine, Malkhus, Serapion, and Anthony. A third includes Maximilian, Martinian, Dionisius, John, Constantine, Yamblikh, and Anthony. Islamic sources such as aṭ-Ṭabarī and ad-Damīrī list Makṯimilīnā, Marnūš, Kafašṭaṭyūš, Yamlīḫā, Mišlīnā, Saḏnūš, Dabranūš, Samōnos, Buṭōnos, and Qālos. Gregory of Tours gives Achillides, Probatus, Stephanus, Sambatus, Quiriacus, Diogenus, and Diomedes. Michael the Syrian lists Ikilios, Fruqtis, Istifanos, Sebastos, Qiryaqos, and Dionisios. The Coptic version gives Aršellītīs, Probatios, Sabbastios, Stafanos, Kīriakos, Diōmetios, and Avhenios. The Qur'an does not state the exact number; verse 18:22 discusses disputes, saying some will say three, others five, others seven. Reports attributed to Ibn Abbas state that he was among those who knew their number and that they were seven.
Caves of the Seven Sleepers
Several sites are attributed as the Cave of the Seven Sleepers, but none could empirically prove to be the original. As the earliest versions spread from Ephesus, an early Christian catacomb there came to be associated with it, attracting pilgrims. On the slopes of Mount Pion near Ephesus, the grotto with ruins of the religious site built over it was excavated in 1926–1928, bringing to light several hundred graves dated to the 5th and 6th centuries, with inscriptions dedicated to the sleepers. This grotto is still shown to tourists. Other possible sites include caves in Damascus, Syria; Afşin and Tarsus, Turkey; near Amman, Jordan; in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan; at Mar Musa monastery in Syria; on Mount Qasioun in Damascus; at Al-Rajeb in Greater Amman; at a mosque in Chenini, Tunisia; and at Ed-Deir in Petra. The site at Afşin was a Hittite temple, later used as a Roman temple and then a church, and the Emperor Justinian brought marble niches from Western Anatolia as gifts, preserved inside the Eshab-ı Kehf Kulliye mosque. The Seljuks continued to use the place as a church and a mosque, and it was turned into a mosque over time.
Modern literature
By the 1500s, the story of the Seven Sleepers had become a common reference in Protestant culture. John Donne’s poem “The Good-Morrow” asks if the lovers had been snoring in the Seven Sleepers’ den before they fell in love. In John Heywood’s play The Four PP, a Pardoner offers a slipper from one of the Sleepers as a relic, treating it with the same absurdity as his other relics, like the great toe of the Trinity or a buttock bone of Pentecost. The tale faded during the Enlightenment but came back with Romanticism. The Golden Legend likely inspired versions by Thomas de Quincey, Goethe, Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle,” and H. G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes, and may have influenced the “king asleep in mountain” motif. Mark Twain made a burlesque of the story in The Innocents Abroad. Edward Gibbon recorded different versions in his history of Rome. Serbian writer Danilo Kiš retold it in “The Legend of the Sleepers” from The Encyclopedia of the Dead. In Andrea Camilleri’s The Terracotta Dog, the Sleepers are symbolically replaced by two lovers killed by an assassin and laid in a cave. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series has Will Stanton awaken the Sleepers in The Grey King, and they ride in the final battle in Silver on the Tree. Gilbert Morris’s Seven Sleepers series updates the tale with seven teenagers awakened after a nuclear apocalypse to fight evil.
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