The Story of the People of the Cave

Many Muslim families read Surah Al-Kahf every Friday, and most children hear the name long before they hear the story. It is one of the strangest and most gripping accounts in the Qur'an: a group of young people who hid in a cave to escape a king, and woke up three hundred years later.

Young people who would not pretend

They lived in a city whose people worshipped idols, under a king who would not tolerate anything else. The Qur'an calls them fityah, young men, and says: they were youths who believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance. They were young. That detail matters to a child, and it is easy to skip past.

They could have kept quiet and blended in. Instead they stood and said their Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and that they would never call upon any god besides Him.

The cave

Knowing what would happen if they stayed, they withdrew to a cave and asked Allah for mercy and for a right way out of their situation. And Allah covered their ears, which is the Qur'an's own phrase, for a number of years.

The details Allah gives are wonderfully specific: the sun rising and setting past the mouth of the cave without falling on them, their bodies being turned to the right and the left so they would not be harmed by lying still, and their dog stretched out at the entrance with its forelegs extended. Children remember the dog.

Three hundred years

They slept for three hundred years, and nine more. When Allah woke them, they thought they had slept a day, or part of a day. One of them was sent into the city with an old coin to buy food, and that is how the people discovered them. A young man walking into a completely changed world, holding money three centuries out of date.

And when the people asked how many they were and how long they had stayed, the Qur'an gives the answer that matters more than the arithmetic: say, my Lord knows best their number. Allah tells us the point of the story is not the sum.

What children take from it

• You can be young and still be the one who is right. They were youths, and the Qur'an says Allah increased them in guidance because of it.
• Allah protects in ways you would never think of. Not a rescue, not an army: sleep, and the sun moving politely around the mouth of a cave.
• Standing alone is survivable. They left everything they knew rather than pretend, and Allah took care of the rest.

Read more about the People of the Cave → The full story is narrated in the Sukun Kids app. A good one for Friday.