018- AL-KAHF
THE CAVE
Al-Kahf
Al-Kahf is a late Makkan sūrah, although a minority hold that the first eight verses are Madinan (Q). Several reports indicate that reciting the first and last ten verses of this sūrah has the power to protect one from the trials of the grave or from alDajjāl, identified with the Antichrist or the figure whom Christ will defeat in the end times. This sūrah contains three main narratives—that of the inhabitants of the cave, from which the sūrah takes its name (vv. 9–26); the tale of Moses and the mysterious servant (vv. 60–82); and the story of Dhu’l-Qarnayn (vv. 83–98)—as well as a lengthy parable about the dangers of enjoying the good things of this world, without gratitude to God, while neglecting the Hereafter (vv. 32–46). Between these narrative sections are woven various warnings to the disbelievers, including reminders about the coming of judgment and punishment in the Hereafter. The sūrah closes by evoking the inexhaustibility of God’s Word (v. 109), followed by a reminder that the Prophet is but a human being to whom Divine Revelation has been sent (v. 110).
The narratives of the inhabitants of the cave and of Dhu’lQarnayn were reportedly revealed to the Prophet in response to a challenge from the Quraysh. According to a widely reported account, the Quraysh sent Naḍr ibn al-Ḥārith and ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿīṭ to some Jewish religious scholars of Madinah to ask them about Muhammad and his claims to prophethood. The Jewish scholars told them that in order to know the validity of Muhammad’s claims to prophethood, they should ask him about three matters, and if he could not answer, then he was not a true prophet:
(1) a group of young men of ancient times who had an extraordinary story (the inhabitants of the cave);
(2) a man who had journeyed until he reached the east and west of the earth (Dhu’l-Qarnayn); and
(3) the Spirit. They returned and questioned the Prophet. He told them that he would give them his response the next day, expecting that a revelation concerning them would come to him.
When fifteen days had passed and no revelation had come, the Prophet grew worried, and the Quraysh began to assume that he had no answers to these questions and that his claims of prophethood were therefore false. The revelation finally came to him, but in v. 6 the Quran reprimands the Prophet for being overly concerned with the disbelief of the Quraysh, and in vv. 23–24 the Prophet is warned not to promise anything in the future (such as answers to questions the next day) without acknowledging that all matters depend on God’s Will.
The three main narratives share some thematic elements, including that of journeying or leaving the comfort of one’s home. The youths of the cave leave home to escape religious persecution; Moses goes off in search of the servant of God he has been told is more knowledgeable than himself; and Dhu’lQarnayn journeys from east to west to establish righteous sovereignty over the land. These three narratives are also concerned with intermediate states of being and hence with the concept of the barzakh, which signifies both the meeting point of opposites and the barrier between them. The concept is elucidated in the Quran through reference to the barrier between the “two seas” of saltwater and freshwater (25:53; 55:19–20), at which point the two waters briefly intermingle, but neither trespasses into the realm of the other.
In Islamic tradition barzakh came to denote the temporal state between the death of the individual soul and universal judgment, or the period of testing and punishment in the grave, as well as an intermediate posthumous state or number of states between Heaven and Hell. In its mystical interpretation, it refers ontologically to the state of the soul as the intermediate realm between pure spirit and base matter, which together constitute the state of human beings; epistemologically it refers to the realm of the imaginal, known through the power of imagination, which is a mode of knowing between sense perception and pure intellection. The youths of the cave, seeking refuge from religious persecution, are made to sleep in the cave for hundreds of years, and their sleep represents an intermediate realm between life and death and thus, by analogy, the state between individual death and universal resurrection. Moses can only encounter the mysterious servant and esoteric figure, identified traditionally with the enigmatic prophet Khaḍir or Khiḍr, at the junction of the two seas (v. 60), at which point the two prophets—one representing exoteric and the other esoteric knowledge—are able to meet and briefly journey together. And Dhu’l-Qarnayn, after journeying to the extremes of west and east, returns to the place of an opening between the two mountain barriers (v. 93), which he then seals up, forming a barrier to hold back Gog and Magog from terrorizing people. This barrier will only hold for the intermediate period of earthly life and will be destroyed by God before the Day of Resurrection.
Finally, these three narratives involve figures who are granted miracles and marvelous powers, even though they are not prophets or their prophetic status is somewhat ambiguous. The youths of the cave are righteous men, but not prophets; yet they are given protection by God through a miraculous sleep. Khiḍr is considered by most to be a prophet who is kept alive by God beyond the range of ordinary human life, even beyond the very long lifetime of certain ancient prophets, such as Noah. But his vocation is exclusively a secret and hidden one, in contrast to the vocation of other prophets who are ordered by God to proclaim revelation publicly, give glad tidings, and issue warnings. Dhu’l-Qarnayn is considered by most commentators to have been a righteous king who was nonetheless granted miraculous means for conquering the world and was spoken to directly by God (v. 86). He is compared by commentators to the prophet-king Solomon, and most commentators have considered him to be Alexander the Great.
(source: “The Study Quran” a new translation and commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
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