The story of Ashab-e-Kahf (the Companion of the Cave) is one of the counter-intuitive stories in Surah Al-Kahf. The story relates that few young men, in order to protect their belief of Tauheed from their community, took refuge in a cave,...
moreThe story of Ashab-e-Kahf (the Companion of the Cave) is one of the counter-intuitive stories in Surah Al-Kahf. The story relates that few young men, in order to protect their belief of Tauheed from their community, took refuge in a cave, where they stayed in a state of sleep for hundreds of years. When they woke up and went back to the city, the situation had changed. Everyone had adopted the same belief the young man had adopted.
The story was related in response to one of the questions posed by Meccans about a famous legend among the people of the Book. There was, however, difference of opinion about who these men were, how many were they, and how long they stayed (slept) in the cave. The Quranic passage suggests that there were three opinions regarding their number among the people of the Book.
Though the Muslim scholars have inferred the number to be seven, the author in this paper has analyzed the issue from a grammatical perspective. His analysis of the usage of the verb in the Quranic verses regarding Ashab-e-Kahf suggests that the only possibility for the number of companions is seven. Only the number seven can be grammatically consistent with the Quranic statements. The number three and five makes the statements grammatically inconsistent. Hence the number based on the verb usage in the Quranic statements seems to be seven.
