Cave of the Seven Sleepers

At Al-Raqim southeast of Amman is a rock-cut tomb chamber with sealed sarcophagi, identified locally with the story of the sleepers who took refuge in a cave from persecution and woke centuries later, a narrative told in Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and in the Quran in the sura of the Cave. A church was built over it in the Byzantine period and a mosque in the Umayyad period, and both phases survive around the chamber.

Background

The site lies in ar-Rajib, a village east of Amman, and its Arabic name is Kahf ar-Raqīm. In the legend the young men entered the cave around AD 250, and the Quran puts their sleep at 309 lunar years. The Jordanian journalist Taysir Thabyan came upon the cave in 1951. Inside are seven sarcophagi and eight smaller sealed tombs that still held bones. Two stone pilasters and two niches at the entrance remain from a Byzantine church, which became a mosque under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who died in 705, and was renovated under the Tulunids. Traces of a minaret and four Byzantine pillars stand beside it, and a Byzantine cemetery lies some 500 metres west.

Source: Wikipedia, "Cave of the Seven Sleepers"

Highlights

• The tomb chamber - the rock-cut room with its sealed sarcophagi.
• The two sanctuaries - Byzantine and Umayyad phases built above the cave.
• The shared narrative - a story told in both Christian and Islamic tradition.
• The site setting - the hillside southeast of the modern city.

When to go

Year round; the site keeps daytime hours and closes some days. Fridays restrict access around prayer. Mornings are quietest.

Before you go

Other places claim to be the cave of the same story, and the identification is traditional rather than proven. The site is small and half an hour covers it. It sits in an unremarkable suburb.

Nearby

Amman is northwest, and Iraq al-Amir is west.