Ephesus — the grotto of the Seven Sleepers

OVERVIEW

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (in Islam, the Companions of the Cave) are the subject of a late-antique Christian legend and a Qur'anic story: youths who hid in a cave around AD 250 to escape the persecution of Christians and emerged many years later. They have been venerated as saints since at least the 5th century. As the legend spread from Ephesus, an early Christian catacomb on the slopes of Mount Pion (Mount Coelian), near modern Selçuk, came to be associated with it and drew pilgrims.

HISTORY

The story appears in Syriac sources before Gregory of Tours (538–594); the earliest manuscript copy dates to the 5th century, and the earliest known version is by the Syriac bishop Jacob of Serugh (c. 450–521). A text written between 518 and 531 records a church to the Sleepers at Ephesus. The grotto, with the ruins of the religious site built over it, was excavated in 1926–1928: several hundred graves of the 5th and 6th centuries, with inscriptions to the Seven Sleepers on the walls and in the graves.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND. The article lists other claimed sites of the cave in Damascus, Afşin and Tarsus; this pin is the Ephesus grotto, the one the Christian legend names. The claim year is the 5th-century manuscript, approximate.

VISITING

The grotto is still shown to tourists, on Mount Pion near Ephesus and Selçuk.