2019-01-07T13:59:00-08:00
In the previous article, we discussed the story of the People of the Cave from Christian historical sources, and in this article we will search for other sources for the story.
The truth is, if we search for other sources that talk about the story of the People of the Cave other than Christian sources, we will only find them in Islamic sources. When we go to search the Islamic sources, we will find that they are divided into three types: the Holy Qur’an, the sources of Shiite thought, and the sources of Sunni thought. We have placed these sources on an external page, and everyone can view them in the link below.
The story of the People of the Cave – Islamic sources
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Now, before discussing these Islamic sources, there is an important question that must be asked:
How will we deal with these Islamic sources? Will we treat them as historical documents or as religious documents, meaning will we deal with them as historical texts or as sacred religious texts?
Logically, I think we will face some kind of confusion in dealing. The reason for the confusion is that the nature of the sources is mixed between a sacred text and exegetic texts of a sacred text, and this confusion will cause us a problem in research, so we have to separate the sources and divide them into two types. The first type of sources is a sacred religious text, while the second type of sources is exegetic texts. .
We will postpone talking about the first type. We will now discuss the Islamic exegetical sources.
As for exegetical texts, we will deal with these types of sources as non-sacred texts and not as sacred religious texts, because it is certain that those explanatory texts were never mentioned in this form in the sacred text so that we must deal with them as a religious text, even if they took on a religious character and after My soul, and that is why this story was written in the books of commentators and not in a sacred religious book.
Now let’s discuss those sources
When we read these sources carefully, most of them are interpretations of a religious text, and they come from figures who have a great place in the religious consciousness of Muslims, such as the Prophet or clerics from the ancestors.
We will find that these explanatory texts also take on a historical character, and this character overwhelms the interpretive aspect, and they begin to appear as purely historical sources, but rather as sources that deal with the subject from a historical aspect, and it is not difficult for anyone to realize that they are a copy of Christian sources, but after If it is matched with the Qur’anic text, such that the period appears to be 300 years, the location of the cave, its name, descriptions of the place, the number of young men, the construction of a mosque, etc.
But there is a note between the sources in Shiite thought and the sources in Sunni thought.
As for the sources of Shiite thought, it comes from the tongue of Imam Ali, and it is a long story in which all the verses of the Qur’an are explained, but we find in it the same character found in the Syriac sources, an organized and beautiful literary character in general, mixed with a historical and interpretive character.
The Shiite sources appear to be an exact copy of the Syriac sources in character, but they differ from them in the location of the incident, the names of the boys, the time of the story, the name of the king from whom the boys fled, and even the name of the dog.
The place of the story is the city of Philadelphia, Amman, Jordan, and the time of the story is approximately 120 years after the birth of Christ, and the name of the ruler is (Rajan). As for the names of the boys, their pronunciation is completely similar to the names in the Syriac sources.
We find the story in general to be somewhat arranged and organized, but it is less good in literary terms than the Syriac version. It is a story that appeared all at once and in one breath without any interruption.
The story places the incident in the year 106 after the birth of Christ in Jordan, when the armies of Rome invaded Jordan during the rise of the Nabataean Kingdom. In the year 112 AD, the ruler Trajan issued a decree that whoever refused to worship the gods would be treated as a traitor and would be executed. And that all Al-Nasarah are traitors, and the Christian had the choice between worshiping the gods or death!
The same story of persecution is repeated here, but in a different time than the Syriac sources. Throughout history, the role of the Romans before they embraced Christianity was to persecute Al-Nasarah, and there must be a convincing reason about the circumstances of the story and the environment from which the story emerged, as the Romans are always the reason for the persecution of Al-Nasarah. It is not known what the purpose of this decree is. Are they looking for taxes or belief in the Roman gods?
Let’s discuss the details of the story.
■ Notice in the story…the name of one of the boys is similar to the name of the Syriac sources, but with a slight distortion. Here his name is Emilichus, and in the Syriac sources he is Imlecha.
■ Note that there is accuracy in the story…in determining the location of the cave and its location in relation to the four directions of north and south and in relation to the sun. It even displays the area of the cave in metres.
I actually do not know the exact source from which this information was mentioned, but I quoted it from an official website. But if the first source speaks in this way, then it is not an ancient source, but rather a modern source, because it is a modern awareness that deals with metric length.
■ Notice the strange behavior of the boys. The source says that the boys decided to sleep because they were tired.
Here you wonder whether they need to get tired in order to sleep, or is sleep a natural thing, and the boys will go to sleep, any human being will go to sleep. But it seems that the story teller is rushing the miracle by finding a convincing reason for the first sleep, which will make them continue it for 300 years.
This indicates that the writer of the story is the one who draws the events, and they are not spontaneous events.
■ Note also an important point
Read the names of boys and the names of kings and cities, you will find them with a purely Greek character and flavour, a purely Greek world that pervades space and time, a purely Greek story, but within this world you find a strange, anomalous and completely different point that does not belong to this world at all…. ….and it is the name of the village (Al-Raqim)….a pure Arabic name…..but within a story whose entire atmosphere is pure Greek.
There is no relationship between the name (Al-Raqim) and the name of Philadelphia, Max Melianus, Amilichus Mutianus, Danius, and Antonius.
So whose name is Antonius, and in the city of Philadelphia, and whose king’s name is Arrican, and in whose city there is a statue of Athena, it is assumed that he lives near a village called (Salcius) and not a village called (Al-Raqim).
Totally illogical, unnatural and unreal
Of course, the name indicates that someone tried to give one pre-existing story another story so that he could match it with a name found in the Qur’an. The name of the Companions of the Cave and Ar-Raqim found in the Qur’an.
■ Notice the behavior of the seller as he took gold money from one of the boys who went to buy food, when he said, “We do not deal with this money,” and then he said that he believed that the boy had obtained a treasure.
Totally illogical
Because people, in any place or time, deal with gold regardless of the antiquity of its mint. The value is in gold, not in the instrument.
The story makes every king issue coins in his name, and then the presence of old money becomes a very natural thing, and this situation imposes a general character that makes anyone not need to be surprised and look at it as a treasure.
It also means that with each ownership, the previous instruments become uncirculated, and this is illogical.
Why does every king mint money?
Because the story requires a process of coining money with each king…because its function is to determine the period during which the cave boys slept, and by reviewing the list of kings of Rome, then it is possible to calculate the period between one king and another, by comparing the coins, and it will be the same. How long did the people of the cave sleep?
That is, there is a prior goal in the story scenario, and there is awareness from the beginning in pushing the story towards this goal, which is the miracle, meaning that all the story’s characters play roles to achieve a pre-determined goal.
■ The story places the time when the boys got up from sleep during the reign of King Theodosius, who is almost the same king in the Syriac sources.
But when the boys got up, the plot was unconvincing. There was no convincing surprise. Rather, the story paid attention to the words of an old man who said that his grandmother was talking about boys who ran away with their religion. It was the old man’s role to connect him to his grandmother, that is, to the past tense, in order to confirm that it was a miracle so that the people inside the story would be sure that it was a miracle. The story did not convince them, and they needed the old man’s statement to confirm it for them.
illogical
Because the miracle imposes itself and does not need an old saying or any other evidence.
In conclusion, these sources are similar in general to the Syriac sources, but they differ in scenario, plot, and geographical location.
In the Syriac version, it says that the cave in Asia Minor, Turkey, was the city of (Ephesus) during the reign of Decius 250 AD, and in this version it makes Jordan the city of (Philadelphia), the village of Al-Raqim, the place of the cave during the reign of Aragon 112 AD.
I think we have finished discussing the story, and there is no need to discuss some other points related to the story, because we talked about them in the first article when we talked about the Christian sources of the story.
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Now we will discuss the Sunni sources
We will extract some of them for you, because they are small and brief
It was said about the conditions of the young men that they were sons of the nobles or sons of kings, and that they were young in age, and that King Daqnius was touring the Roman cities and did not leave anyone in them following the religion of Issa, son of Maryam, peace and blessings be upon him, except to kill him, and the young men had denied what King Daqnius was upon. And his people worshiped idols and disdained their situation, so they mentioned to Daqnius that among the members of your entourage are those who disobey your command and disdain your gods. So Daqnius gathered the young men and ordered them to follow his gods and sacrifice to them, then he threatened to kill them after he saw among them the steadfastness of their religion and their determination to cling to it and defend it, then he decided to make They had a date in which he would seek their return to him and his gods, and he would not delay their account except to take into account their young age and their ignorance of what might be done to them of killing, bloodshed, and hanging their remains at the gates of the city, as is done to those who are not of a religion. And Diqnius went outside the city to seek something, so the young men gathered to isolate themselves from the people. And fleeing to a cave in a mountain on the outskirts of the city called Benjalous, so they started worshiping Allah and occupied all their time with supplication and remembrance, and they put one of them on their food and his name was Yamlikha, so if he wanted to go out to the city market, he would put off his clothes by which he was known for his honor and lineage, and he would wear torn clothes to hide himself from them. The people of his city, so he returns to his friends with food and sustenance without anyone realizing it.
The return of the king
When King Daqnius returned to the city, he asked for the boys to be allowed to wait for their term, which he had delayed for them. The people mentioned to him what had happened to them, so he gathered his soldiers and then went to the cave and built on it so that they could die inside it, as if Allah had struck their ears, and in their sleep there was a loss of hearing, which is the most affected of the senses. During sleep. Then Allah sent a king to follow the religion of Issa, son of Maryam, peace and blessings be upon him, and it was during his reign that Allah gave permission for the cave to be opened by the hand of a shepherd who went to the cave to protect his sheep from the rain. So Allah sent the owners of the cave, but they disagreed about the length of their sleep, then they sent Imlikha, who was in charge of their food, to buy for them, and it happened whenever it passed. With a teacher he denied it, until when he reached the market and showed his dirhams, the people denied him and gathered to ask about his matter, then they brought his matter to the king, who told him the stories, so the king and his people followed him to the cave to witness the departure of his companions, and when they arrived, Yamlkha preceded them to his companions, so Allah struck them and they died, so the king slowed him down, so he entered with his people. They found them in their condition and hastened their affairs, so they established a church and a mosque in which prayers could be made.
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This is a summary of Sunni sources
Sunni sources do not need a long explanation in their explanation as in Shiite sources, because we find it merely a summary of the story found in Syriac sources only.
Just a summary of the story in Syriac sources.
Sunni sources seem uninterested in the literary character, and have tendencies towards interpretation more than tendencies towards the literary and narrative character, and are not interested in details and names as in the Shiite sources, that is, they bear the character of the event and the historical aspect, which is brief and not lengthy.
The only difference found in the Sunni sources from the Syriac sources is the name of the king. In the Syriac version, the name of the king is Dakios, while in the Sunni sources his name is Dakios, and it is certain that he is the same king, but distorted translations are the reason, when transfers and copies were made from other sources, and Which had a fundamental role in creating imaginary worlds, imaginary characters, and imaginary times.
We have almost finished discussing the story in Sunni sources.
What is the conclusion?
Reading Islamic sources that talk about the story of the People of the Cave makes us ask an important question:
Do we consider those texts found in Islamic heritage as sources for the story of the People of the Cave?
I think the answer is no
Why ?
Because, as we found, the Sunni sources are nothing but a summary of the story found in the Syriac sources. These explanatory texts can only be considered a process of copying and pasting, that is, they are not the first source of the story, and therefore they cannot be considered as sources, because the first source of the story is the Syriac sources.
What about Shiite sources?
Almost the Shiite texts can be considered a source, because they have a somewhat different story, they have a different scenario, a different geography, and a different time from the Syriac sources, and they came from the tongue of Imam Ali, in the chapter on knowledge, and this gives it a separate character and an official document, even though The Shiite sources bear a character in narratives and attributes similar to the character found in the Syriac sources.
So….in the end, we come up with a certain conclusion, which is that the story of the Companions of the Cave contains only two sources, the Syriac sources and the Shiite sources only.
These two sources are the reason why some believe that the story of the Companions of the Cave occurred in Turkey, while others believe that it occurred in Jordan.
So there is a disagreement between the two sources about the location of the incident and the source of the story.
But the question is logical:
Did Imam Ali talk about the story of the People of the Cave in general and not restricted by prior data, or was he based on prior data that he had? .
Of course, the answer is that he was based on a prior given, and this given is the Qur’an in which the story of the People of the Cave is mentioned. It is the prior given that made him speak of the story of the People of the Cave, and if it had not been present in the Qur’an, Imam Ali would not have spoken about it.
So the logical question:
Could Imam Ali put himself in a position of disagreement with the Qur’an?
Why ?
Because Jebril could tell the same story that came from Imam Ali, and in detail, and if it were really the same story that Imam Ali narrated, today we would read in the Qur’an the name Philadelphia.
In Surah Al-Kahf, specifically in the verse {So send one of you with this paper of yours to the city of Philadelphia}.
The choice is yours.
As for me… logically, I consider that the true sources for the story of the People of the Cave are the Syriac sources, because they are the first official source that mentions the story, and the second source that mentions the story is only the Holy Qur’an.
I do not rely on the text of Imam Ali’s interpretation as a primary source for the story, but rather a secondary source that is attached and affiliated with a primary source that preceded it, which is the Qur’an, because I am searching for the first primary sources that mentioned the story.
The first source that talked about the story of the People of the Cave is the Syriac sources, and the second source that talked about the story of the People of the Cave is the Holy Qur’an.
So we are faced with two sources, the first is a historical source and the second is a purely religious source. The first is a historical text and the second is a sacred text.
After we talked about the previous sources, we will go to discuss and study the sacred religious source, the Holy Qur’an.
But in the next part
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