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The Martyrdom of the Seven Sleepers in Transformation

Marcel Poorthuis discusses the radical re-interpretation of the story about seven boys who fall asleep for several centuries in a cave during the persecution by Emperor Decius. They refused to burn incense before ‘idols made by hands’ and fled into a cave, where God took their spirits and brought them to heaven. The story has been associated with martyrdom and has pre-Christian forerunners but it was transmitted in a Syriac- Christian version by Jacob of Serugh (451-521 CE). The Qur’ān recycles this story, but its thrust is wholly different. Ironically, the story in Sura 18 has been transformed into an anti-Christian polemic. This story in turn has been re-created in the novel My Father’s Notebook (Spijkerschrift) by the Iranian-Dutch writer Kader Abdollah (translated in English as My Father’s Notebook, 2006). The story symbolises the future return of happiness and beauty for the people, persecuted both under the Shah and under Khomeini.