Five or six young men who have become Christians, are being chased by Roman soldiers. They run all the way from the city of Ephesus (in Asia minor - now Turkey, references in Abul Aala Mawdoodi's TAFHEEM-UL-QUR'AN) to the outskirts of present-day Damascus. They find a cave up in the mountains. They enter the cave. With the young men is their faithful dog. As they enter the cave, their dog sits in a relaxing posture at the mouth of the cave with its jaw resting on its front paws. The soldiers come and search for the fugitives. The relaxing dog indicates to them that there is no one else around. By a miracle, the young men fall asleep and remain so for a period of three hundred (or 309 ) years. The dog too remains. They wake up and feel hungry. One of them goes out to buy a loaf of bread. His dress (which is three hundred years old) and the coin he presents to the baker arouses the curiosity of the city. They want to know if he had found an old treasure. He runs back to the cave while the city folks are chasing him. (if you have seen the film in which Bill Bixby wakes up after 25 years in an Army Hospital and tries to find his US Airforce Unit, then you will appreciate this part of the story very well - Or remember the story of Rip Van Winkle!!)
He re-enters the cave and all of them pray to Allah that they may be saved from the mob. The cave closes by Allah's command and the young men are put to sleep by His command to wake up again on the Day of Judgement. There is another view that they are actually dead now.)
I visited the site of the cave outside of Damascus up in the mountains back in 1977. You really cannot see much. There is now a mosque and a Madrasah at that ************************ (up in the mountains). A teenager comes and tells you this whole story in a non-stop monotone and of course, expects money from you. The curious part of the story is that he tells you the names of the six young men and they are:
1. Mixelmeena
2. Sarnulis
3. Tamleekha
4. Martunis
5. Naynunis
6. Daryunis
Last but not least, the name of the dog is Qitmeer.
One of the lessons of the story is: If a dog such as Qitmeer can be glorified to the extent that it will be mentioned in the holy Qur'an, only because it was the faithful servant of the six pious Christians, then why can't we (the faithful followers of the Prophet and of the Imams) be glorified by declaring ourselves as the servants of the glorified Ahlul-Bayt? In answer to that question, a tradition has developed in the Shia culture of Awadh (Northern India) in that they name their male children as KALB-E-MUSTAFA, Kalb-e-Irtedha, Kalb-e-Husayn, Kalb-e-Abbas, Kalb-e-Hasan, and of course, Kalb-e-Mahdi etc.
As I said, the story of the Companions of the Cave is not mentioned in the Bible but it does have a place in the extra-Biblical Christian Tradition. While the Christian tradition would tend to associate the story to the period of the Diocletion Persecution (284-303 A.D.), the Arab-Muslim tradition would connect it with the period of the emperor Decius (249-251 A.D.). The credibility of the Arab-Muslim tradition is enhanced by the following explanation.
When after their long sleep the Companions of the Cave wake up and feel hungry, one of them named Tamleekha goes out to buy a loaf of bread. He presents a coin to the baker which is now 300 years old. Now, the name Decius has also appeared in some places as Decianus. That, when transcribed in the Arabic Alphabet, reads as DAQYANOOS.
The baker looks up to Tamleekha and says: "Where did you get that DAQYANOOSI coin?"
That monologue of the baker is the origin of one of the well-known Urdu idioms; when some one says something old, primitive and out of date, our reaction is expressed as follows:
KYA DAQYANOOSI BATEN KARTE HO,
or,
baRe Daqyanoosi khayalaat rakhte ho..... |