Great thread! I would like to add the story of the sleepers in the cave with their little dog (18:9-26). I'm on my phone right now, going to sleep, so I'll keep it short. But the story goes something like this: an unknown number of believers leave their town where they're ridiculed. They fall in sleep in a cave, apparently the sight of them should make you shit scared. This is a "mercy" from their lord. A clear sign from our lord is that they move in their "sleep" and that the sun raises and sets right to left of the cave (?!). A dog, also asleep, "guards" outside. They wake up, go to town and find out the town is now a town of believers. Subhanak ya Rabb.
So if you are ridiculed you should hide in a cave and sleep for hundreds of years until your problems go away
And why would it even matter that someone got scared because they looked like they were dead or something? The whole story is really silly. But my favourite part is "kalbuhum baasitun"
I remember my tafseer teacher elaborating on this one. I remember clearly two of the numerous lessons we could derive from this. One, even if you are a dog (meaning, a worthless being apparently), if you keep in good company you will be part of them and mentioned with them. So keep good company... or something. Secondly, never ever let a dog inside your home, because the dog was
outside the cave
The story is quite fragmented at times, has no real deeper meaning, and appeares to be intended to impress no one except illiterate 7th century bedouins.
Great idea for a thread!
As for the "Seven Sleepers" story, there are several great recent articles by Western scholars on the subject (by Reynolds and Griffith, specifically). They make a completely compelling argument that the Qur'an is not attempting to deliver a detailed narrative, but rather to *remind* its listeners of the Syriac Christian religious traditions *that they already know by heart*. In other words, it's as if somebody nowadays was to say "remember in the Matrix, when Neo takes the red pill? That's what this is like." 95% of young men in the West would know what that means; you don't need to tell the entire story of the first Matrix movie anew, everybody knows the reference.
So the Qur'an is not, by itself, comprehensible -- it must be read in the context of a biblical/Christian background to understand what the story is about and what it means. It is because Islam later attempted to divorce the Qur'an from this background, and remove its alleged origins deep within the pagan Hijaz, that Muslims were never able to satisfactorily explain what this story means, what its language is, and what it is referring to.
As Reynolds and Griffith show, if you know the Syriac background, there are several key points you would understand. First, there are several different versions of the stories in Syriac tradition, and they involve different numbers of sleepers and different numbers of years. Second, God places a "watcher" over the youths while they sleep, as lambs of god; the watcher, thus, is understood as a sheep dog keeping God's lambs safe from the wolves. This is where the otherwise inexplicable Qur'anic dog comes from. Third, in the Syriac tradition the youths' souls are taken up to heaven while they are 'asleep', and then return to their bodies later -- in other words, they were resurrected.
This background is necessary to understand wtf the story means, what its terms are referring to, and what its point is. The Qur'an is invoking this well-known story to remind its listeners about the *truth of bodily resurrection*, and how that was *proven* by the sleepers. The Qur'an argues that while nobody seems to know the exact numbers involved, the fact of the miracle is a fact. It is addressing an audience that already knows the story very well, and believes in its truth. Thus the Qur'an is making a *citation* to prove that bodily resurrection is REAL. That is the point here.
When read without the Syriac tradition as its assumed background, however, and with instead a mythological pagan Hijaz as the background, the story become incomprehensible gibberish.
From a broader perspective, this illustrates the critical fact that Islam *no longer understood the context, language, and references used in the Qur'an*. The same is true of the many other stories related in the Qur'an. The Qur'an is not a narrative text. It is a REMINDER, a warning, a commentary, a correction. After it was mythologically jammed into the Pagan Hijaz and interpreted through the Sirah, Muslims no longer remembered what it was reminding them of, what language it was using, and what its point was. Thus these stories, although coherent in their original context, became incomprehensible gibberish as misread by later Muslim tradition.
Topic: Qur'an's Pointless Stories