Seven Sleepers

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus was a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, to escape a persecution of Christians being conducted during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius. Another version is that Decius ordered them imprisoned in a closed cave to die there as punishment for being Christians. Having fallen asleep inside the cave, they purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying.

The earliest version of this story comes from the Syrian bishop Jacob of Sarug (c. 450-521), which is itself derived from an earlier Greek source, now lost. An outline of this tale appears in Gregory of Tours (b. 538, d. 594), and in Paul the Deacon's (b. 720, d. 799) History of the Lombards. The best-known Western version of the story appears in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend.

The Roman Martyrology mentions the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus under the date of 27 July, as follows: "Commemoration of the seven Holy Sleepers of Ephesus, who, it is recounted, after undergoing martyrdom, rest in peace, awaiting the day of resurrection." The Byzantine Calendar commemorates them with feasts on 4 August and 22 October.

The story has its highest prominence, however, in the Muslim world; it is told in the Qur'an (Surah 18, verse 9-26). The Quranic rendering of this story doesn't state exactly the number of sleepers Surah 18, verse 22. It also gives the number of years that they slept as 300 solar years (equivalent to 309 lunar years). Unlike the Christian story, the Islamic version includes mention of a dog who accompanied the youths into the cave, and was also asleep, but when people passed by the cave it looked as if the dog was just keeping watch at the entrance, making them afraid of seeing what is in the cave once they saw the dog. (see Islamic interpretation). In Islam, these youths are referred to as "The People of the Cave".

The story
The story alleges that during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius,around 250 AD, seven young men were accused of following Christianity. They were given some time to recant their faith, but chose instead to give their worldly goods to the poor and retire to a mountain cave to pray, where they fell asleep. The emperor, seeing that their attitude towards paganism had not improved, ordered the mouth of the cave to be sealed.

Decius died in 251, and many years passed during which Christianity went from being persecuted to being the state religion of the Roman Empire. At some later time&mdash;usually given as during the reign of Theodosius II (408–450)&mdash;the landowner decided to open up the sealed mouth of the cave, thinking to use it as a cattle pen. He opened it and found the sleepers inside. They awoke, imagining that they had slept but one day, and sent one of their number to Ephesus to buy food, with instructions to be careful lest the pagans recognize and seize him. Upon arriving in the city, this person was astounded to find buildings with crosses attached; the townspeople for their part were astounded to find a man trying to spend old coins from the reign of Decius. The bishop was summoned to interview the sleepers; they told him their miracle story, and died praising God.



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 Coelian) near Ephesus (near modern Selçuk in Turkey), the "grotto" of the Seven Sleepers with ruins of the church built over it was excavated in 1927–28. The excavation brought to light several hundred graves which were dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. Inscriptions dedicated to the Seven Sleepers were found on the walls of the church and in the graves. This "grotto" is still shown to tourists.

Syriac origins
The story appeared in several Syriac sources before Gregory's lifetime. It was retold by Symeon Metaphrastes. Another Syriac version is printed in Land's Anecdota, iii. 87ff; see also Barhebraeus, ''Chron. eccles''. i. 142ff., and cf Assemani, ''Bib. Or.'' i. 335ff.

The Seven Sleepers form the subject of a homily in verse by the Edessan poet Jacob of Saruq ("Sarugh") (died 521), which was published in the Acta Sanctorum. Another 6th-century version, in a Syrian manuscript in the British Museum (Cat. Syr. Mss, p. 1090), gives eight sleepers. There are considerable variations as to their names.

Dissemination
The story rapidly attained a wide diffusion throughout Christendom, popularized in the West by Gregory of Tours, in his late 6th-century collection of miracles, De gloria martyrum (Glory of the Martyrs). Gregory says that he had the legend from "a certain Syrian".

In the following century, Paul the Deacon told the tale in his History of the Lombards (i.4) but gave it a different setting:

Their dress identified them as Romans, according to Paul, and none of the local barbarians dared to touch them.

During the period of the Crusades, bones from the sepulchres near Ephesus, identified as relics of the Seven Sleepers, were transported to Marseille, France in a large stone coffin, which remained a trophy of the Abbey of Saint Victor, Marseille.

The Seven Sleepers were included in the Golden Legend compilation, the most popular book of the later Middle Ages, which fixed a precise date for their resurrection, 378 AD, in the reign of Theodosius.

Early modern literature
The account had become proverbial in 16th century Protestant culture. The poet John Donne could ask,

In John Heywood's Play Called the Four PP (1530s), the Pardoner, a Renaissance update of Chaucer's Pardoner, offers his companions the opportunity to kiss "a slipper / Of one of the Seven Sleepers," but the relic is presented as absurdly as the Pardoner's other offerings, which include "the great-toe of the Trinity" and "a buttock-bone of Pentecost."

Little is heard of the Seven Sleepers during the Enlightenment, but the account revived with the coming of Romanticism. The Golden Legend may have been the source for retellings of the Seven Sleepers in Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, in a poem by Goethe, Washington Irving's "Rip van Winkle", H. G. Wells's The Sleeper Awakes. It also might have an influence on the motif of the "king in the mountain".

Modern literature
Serbian writer Danilo Kiš retells the story of the Seven Sleepers in a short story, "The Legend of the Sleepers", in his book The Encyclopedia of the Dead. Italian author Andrea Camilleri incorporates the story in his novel The Terracotta Dog.

The Seven Sleepers appear in two books of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series; Will Stanton awakens them in The Grey King, and in Silver on the Tree they ride in the last battle against the Dark.

The Seven Sleepers series by Gilbert Morris takes a modern approach to the story, in which seven teenagers must be awakened to fight evil in a post-nuclear-apocalypse world.

The Persian–Dutch writer Kader Abdolah gives his own interpretation to the Islamic version of the story, (see below) in the 2000 book Spijkerschrift (English trans. 2006 "My Father's Notebook"), based on the writer's experience in the left-wing opposition to both the Shah's regime and the Islamic Republic. The book includes extensive quotations from the Koran's account. At its end the narrator's sister and fellow-activist escapes from prison and together with other escaped political prisoners hides at a mountain cave in north Iran, where they would sleep until Iran is free of oppression.

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk alludes to the story, more specifically through the element of the dog, in the chapter "I am a Dog" in his 2001 novel, My Name Is Red.

The Qur'anic version
English translation:

Islamic scholarly interpretation
The above mentioned verses from the Qur'an are the only known Islamic source for this story. According to Muslim scholars, God revealed these verses because the people of Mecca challenged the Prophet Muhammad with questions that were passed on to them from the Jews of Medina in an effort to test his authenticity. They asked him about young men who disappeared in the past, about a man who traveled the earth from east to west, Zulqurnain, and about the soul. The story parallels the Christian version, recounting the story of a group of young believers who resisted the pressure from their people to worship others beside God, and took refuge in a cave, following which they fell asleep for a long time. When they woke up they thought that they had slept for only a day or so, and they sent one of them back to the city to buy food. His use of old silver coins revealed the presence of these youths to the town. Soon after their discovery, the People of the Cave (as the Qur'an calls them) died and the people of their town built a place of worship at the site of their burial (the cave). The Qur'an does not give their exact number. It mentions that some people would say that they were three, others would say five and some would say seven, in addition to one dog, and that they slept for 300 years, plus 9, which could mean 300 solar years or 309 lunar years (300 solar years are equal to 309 lunar years).

The Qur'an emphasized that their number and the length of their stay is known only to God and a few people, and that these issues are not the important part of the story, but rather the lessons that can be learned from it.

Location of the cave and duration of stay
Muslims firmly believe in the story as it is mentioned in the Qur'an; however, some aspects of the story are not covered in its account, including the exact location of the cave. Some allege that it is in Ephesus, Turkey; others cite a place near Amman, Jordan. Uyghur Muslims even suggest Tuyukhojam, Turpan is the location of the cave, because they believe that place matches the Qur'an's description. The exact dates of their alleged sleep are also not given in the Qur'an; some allege that they entered the cave at the time of Decius (250 AD) and they woke up at the time of Theodosius I (378–395) or Theodosius II (408–450), but neither of these dates can be reconciled with the Qur'an's account of sleeping 300 or 309 years. Some Islamic scholars, however, assert that the 300 or 309 years mentioned in the Qur'an refers to periods of time alleged by those telling the tale, rather than a definitive statement by Allah as to how long they were actually there or this difference can be of solar and lunar years.

Another interpretation is based on the earlier legend of Joseph of Arimathea's having come to Glastonbury, and the cave has been identified as the Chalice Well.

In Southern Tunisia, a mosque of Chenini is called "mosque of the Seven Sleepers" (Masjid al-Ruqood al-Sebaa) where the sleepers are allegedly buried: in the surroundings of the mosque some uncommonly large tombs (about 4 meters long) are visible. It is a popular belief that during their long sleep they did not stop growing, so when they woke up they had become giants. Other Tunisian places where the Seven Sleepers' cave is located are Mides, Tozeur, El-Oudiane (al-Udyān) and Talālat. According to the traveller Abu Salim al-Ayyashi (17th century), the place where they lie is a mountain over the village of Degache (which he calls Daqyūs).

Another place where popular beliefs locate the Seven Sleepers is Azeffoun, in Kabylia (Algeria), where a legend collected by Auguste Mouliéras speaks of seven shepherds who fled into a cave trying to escape the persecution of Decius (Deqyus) and slept forty years there. According to this version, they did not realize that their sleep was so long (but a baker did, since they tried to pay him with an old coin), and decided to get back to sleep. Accordingly, they are reputed to be still sleeping, in a bush difficult to reach, "an hour's walk east of Azeffoun". Their dog, watching over them, can be heard barking by passers-by.

A "mosque of the Seven Sleepers" also exists in the Algerian village of N'Gaous (Aures), but here the legend is somewhat modified, since the tradition speaks of seven people living there in historical times, who mysteriously disappeared and were miraculously found asleep many years later by the pious Sidi Kacem (d. 1623), who consequently ordered that a mosque be built in that place. It should be noted, however, that the mosque itself incorporates some columns of Roman age, with two inscriptions mentioning Trebonianus Gallus, the successor of Decius.

Linguistic derivatives
The Legend of the Seven Sleepers has given origin to sjusovare or syvsover (literally a seven-sleeper), used in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish to refer to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. It means someone who "sleeps hard and long". The word is also used to mean the hibernating rodent called the edible dormouse.

The words Siebenschläfer in German, zevenslaper in Dutch, hétalvó in Hungarian and sedmispáč in Czech bear a meaning similar to the Scandinavian; they characterize someone who usually sleeps long, waking up later than is normally considered necessary or proper.

In Welsh (Cymraeg), a late riser may be referred to as a saith cysgadur—seven sleeper—as in the 1885 novel Rhys Lewis by Daniel Owen, where the protagonist is referred to as such in chapter 37, p. 294 (Hughes a'i Fab, Caerdydd, 1948). This has the double meaning of one who wakes at seven—well into the working day in a Welsh rural setting.

In the Middle East and specifically in Syria, people say: "نومات أهل فسّو", which can be translated as: "May you sleep like the people of Ephesus".

External references

 * Quran - Authorized English Version The Cave- Sura 18 - Quran - Authorized English Version
 * "SS. Maximian, Malchus, Martinian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine, Martyrs", Butler's Lives of the Saints
 * Seven Sleepers videos
 * Catholic Encyclopedia on The Seven Sleepers.
 * Text containing the Seven Sleepers' commemoration as part of the Office of Prime.
 * Sura al-Kahf at Wikisource
 * Photos of the excavated site of the Seven Sleepers cult.
 * The Grotto of the Seven Sleepers, Ephesus
 * Mardan-e-Anjelos is a historical reenactment of the story of Ashaab-e-Kahf (also known as "The Companions of the Cave")
 * Link to 3D stereoview image for cross-eyed free viewing technique of Seven Sleepers near Ephesus - Turkey
 * Gregory of Tours, The Patient Impassioned Suffering of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus translated by Michael Valerie
 * The Lives of the Seven Sleepers from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, William Caxton Middle English translation.
 * The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus by Chardri, translated into English by Tony Devaney Morinelli: Medieval Sourcebook. fordham.edu