AlmohafezThe Companions of the Cave
A handful of young men who believed in God alone in a city entirely against them — and slept in a cave for three hundred years and nine.
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Young men who believed
God describes them as “fitya” — young men. They believed in their Lord at a time when no one else did, so God increased them in guidance and made their hearts firm.
Escape to the cave
When it became too dangerous they left everything and went out to a cave in the mountain, saying as they entered: “Our Lord, grant us mercy from Yourself, and set our affair right for us.”
The long sleep
God sealed their ears in the cave for a number of years — three hundred years, and nine more. The sun would turn away from their cave so it would not harm them, and their dog lay with its forelegs stretched out at the entrance.
Waking
Then God raised them, and they thought they had slept a day or part of a day. When one of them went down to the city with his old coins, the people learned their story — and it became a sign of God’s power.
From the Qur’an
﴿إِذْ أَوَى ٱلْفِتْيَةُ إِلَى ٱلْكَهْفِ فَقَالُوا۟ رَبَّنَآ ءَاتِنَا مِن لَّدُنكَ رَحْمَةًۭ وَهَيِّئْ لَنَا مِنْ أَمْرِنَا رَشَدًۭا﴾
When the young men took refuge in the cave and said: “Our Lord, grant us mercy from Yourself, and prepare for us right guidance in our affair.”
﴿نَّحْنُ نَقُصُّ عَلَيْكَ نَبَأَهُم بِٱلْحَقِّ ۚ إِنَّهُمْ فِتْيَةٌ ءَامَنُوا۟ بِرَبِّهِمْ وَزِدْنَٰهُمْ هُدًۭى﴾
We relate to you their story in truth. They were young men who believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance.
The lesson
Being few or being young does not matter. These were a handful of teenagers — God protected them for three centuries and put their story in His Book, where it still is.