The Cave of Seven Sleepers is an early Christian holy site on the slopes of Mount Pion, Panayır Dağı in Turkish, just outside Ephesus Ancient City near Selçuk. The legend says seven young Christians hid here from Emperor Decius around 250 AD, slept for about two hundred years and woke under Theodosius II. The Quran tells the same story. In the latest report, from November 2023, visitors could only look into the cave from outside.
Ephesus has many Christian stories, but in my view the strangest and the most beautiful one is the legend of the Seven Sleepers. It is also a Christian legend which found its way into the Quran. Christians and Muslims disagree about many things, but they share this story almost in the same form.
I take many of my guests to the Cave of Seven Sleepers. It is one of the quietest places around Ephesus, and most of visitors never hear of it. Yet in its quiet way, it keeps one of the most loved religious legends of the Mediterranean world. Let’s have a look at the legend first, then at the cave itself.
The Legend of the Seven Sleepers
According to the legend told in different versions in different sources, seven Christian young boys who lived under the reign of Emperor Decius around 250 AD (Boys were named Malta, Malchus, Martinianus, Dionysius, Yohannes, Serapion and Konstantinus) refused to offer a sacrifice to the temple where the emperor was deified. They received death threats, and they decided to take refuge in a cave nearby Ephesus. King ordered building a wall on the entrance of the cave.
Seven boys fell asleep after a while. Boys woke up and, unaware of how long they slept, went to the city to buy food. When Yemliha, who wanted to buy bread from a bakery, gave the old money, he learned that they were in the time of Theodosius (408-450) and that they slept with his friends for 200 years.
Christianity had already spread throughout the Roman Empire. When Yemliha returned to the cave and explained the situation, all seven boys decided to go to sleep again and never wake up.
The persecution of Decius was real. In 250 AD, he ordered almost everyone in the empire to sacrifice to the gods in front of a Roman official and to carry a written certificate, a libellus, as proof. My article on the persecution of early Christians in Asia Minor tells how this hit the Christians of our region.
Please keep it in mind that the legend is not in the Bible. The oldest copies of the story are in Syriac, and one manuscript goes back to the 5th century. The poet Jacob of Serugh, who died in 521, told it in a long poem. The story was also told in Greek, Latin, Arabic and many other languages.
The Seven Sleepers in the Golden Legend
The old versions of the legend give many more details. In Europe, the best known one is in the Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives which Jacobus de Voragine wrote in the 13th century. Let’s have a look at how it tells the story.
When Decius came to Ephesus, he ordered everybody to sacrifice to the idols. Seven young Christians gave their wealth to the poor and hid in a cave on the mountain which the book calls Celion. When the emperor learned where they were, he had the mouth of the cave closed with stones, so that they would die of hunger inside.
Long after, a man of Ephesus decided to build a stable for his herdsmen on that mountain, and the stones at the entrance were taken away. The seven woke up thinking they had slept only one night. They sent one of them down to the city to buy bread, and he took some of their old coins with him.
The young man could not recognize his city, there was a cross on every gate, and people spoke the name of Christ openly. When he paid for the bread, the sellers looked at his coin and whispered that he had found an old treasure. They took him to the bishop and the consul of the city.
The bishop and the people followed him up to the cave, and the news reached Emperor Theodosius. The emperor came from Constantinople to Ephesus and went up to the cave to see the saints with his own eyes. After they spoke with him, the seven bowed their heads to the earth and died.
This stained glass panel was made in Rouen, France, around 1200–1210, and it comes from a lost window about the Seven Sleepers. Today it belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It shows how far the story of a small cave nearby Ephesus traveled in the Middle Ages.
Meaning of the Seven Sleepers Legend
Why did Christians love this story so much? Because it is a story about the resurrection of the body. The seven went into the cave expecting death and came out alive, into a world where their faith was no longer a crime but the religion of the emperor.
The Golden Legend says it plainly. The miracle happened in the days of Theodosius, when some people had begun to deny the resurrection of the dead, and the emperor was very sad about it. The sleepers, waking after so many years, were the answer: God can raise the dead.
The legend also gave Ephesus a Christian history of its own too. The pagan past was the time of persecution, and the Christian present was the time of victory. Seven young men who slept across the gap connected the two. You can read how our region changed in my article Pagan to Christian Asia Minor.
The churches still remember them. The Catholic Church marks their feast on July 27, and the Orthodox churches remember them on August 4 and October 22. Orthodox painters made many icons of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, like the Russian one above.
The Seven Sleepers in the Quran
The Quran tells the story in verses 9 to 26 of Surah Al-Kahf, the Chapter of the Cave. It calls them the companions of the cave and the inscription. By the way, in Turkey we call them Ashab-ı Kehf, the people of the cave, or simply Yedi Uyurlar, the Seven Sleepers.
The Quranic version does not give one number for the sleepers. It says that people will say three with their dog as the fourth, or five with the dog as the sixth, or seven with the dog as the eighth, and that only God knows their number (18:22).
The dog is a special part of this version. It lies at the entrance of the cave with its forelegs stretched out (18:18), and Muslim tradition gives it a name, Qitmir. The Quran says they stayed in their cave three hundred years and nine more (18:25). Many commentators explain the extra nine as the difference between solar and lunar years.
So the cave on Mount Pion is a holy place for two religions. You can read more about how the faiths meet in this city in my article Ephesus: The Crossroad of Faiths.
Other Caves of the Seven Sleepers
Ephesus is not alone. Over 40 places in the world claim a share of this legend, and Turkey alone has three of them. That count comes from Cengiz Topal, head of the Selçuk Efes Museum, in an Anadolu Agency report of November 2023.
Besides Ephesus, the Turkish ones are Tarsus in Mersin and Afşin in Kahramanmaraş, where a large Eshab-ı Kehf complex stands. Abroad, the best known one is a cave at Al-Rajeb near Amman in Jordan, and Damascus, Nakhchivan and Chenini in Tunisia have their caves too.
However, in the Christian tradition the home of the legend is Ephesus. The Christian versions place the cave on the mountain beside the city, and the graves found around the Cave of Seven Sleepers show that Christians honored the sleepers here for a long time.
Cave of Seven Sleepers Today
A church and many tombs were found during the excavations in the past years. When inscriptions written to appeal to the Seven Sleepers, who are considered sacred, were seen in the tombs and on the walls of the church, it was accepted that this place was the legendary cave.
The excavations took place in 1926–1928, led by the Austrian Archaeological Institute. Its report came out in 1937 with the title Das Cömeterium der Sieben Schläfer, the Cemetery of the Seven Sleepers. The archaeologists counted several hundred graves, dated to the 5th and 6th centuries.
According to the site management plan of Ephesus, a monument and a church were built over the graves in the time of Theodosius II. What you see today is a complex cut into the hillside: the ruined church, vaulted chambers of brick and stone, and rock-cut graves all around. To be buried close to the holy sleepers was the wish of many Christians.
The cave is on the slopes of Mount Pion, outside the ancient city itself. You reach it by a short asphalt road which turns east beside the Vedius Gymnasium, at the northern end of Ephesus. The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism lists it as Yedi Uyuyanlar Mağarası.
Visiting the Cave of Seven Sleepers
There is one important change since I first wrote this post in 2021. A report by Anadolu Agency in November 2023 said that visitors had not been allowed inside the cave for some time, because of restoration, conservation and landscaping work. They could only look at it from 8 to 10 meters.
Museum director explained that the graves and walls were wearing away fast, and that visitors should not walk over the tombs. He said the inside could open after the site is prepared with a landscaping project.
The management plan of Ephesus for 2022–2027 includes a restoration and visitor route project for the Seven Sleepers, with a visitor center and a parking lot. I have not seen any news of a reopening since the 2023 report, so please ask me about the latest situation before your visit.
Even from outside, the ruined church and the vaults are worth a short stop. Most tours of Ephesus start at the Upper Gate and walk down to the Lower Gate on the northern side of the city, so I recommend to add the cave at the end of the walk. I explain the two entrances in my article Ephesus Upper Gate or Lower Gate.
Please do not mix it up with the Grotto of Saint Paul on Bülbüldağı, the other mountain of Ephesus. That one is closed to visitors. On the same mountain, the House of the Virgin Mary is open, and lunch is easy to find in Selçuk or in the hill village of Şirince.
A November Morning in the Cave
I want to leave you with one memory instead of a long list of facts. I once brought a group to the cave on a foggy morning in late November. The hill was wet, the trees were dripping and the light was gray. We were the only visitors. We walked into the underground chamber and stopped near the back wall.
One of my guests, an older lady from a small Catholic community in northern Italy, asked if she could read the story aloud from the Golden Legend. She read it in Italian. The cave gave her voice a soft and resonant sound, and when she finished, nobody spoke for a long minute.
We could smell the cool damp air and hear water dripping somewhere deeper in the rock. In that moment the Seven Sleepers became real for everybody in the chamber, not as a historical fact but as a memory which the cave was still holding.
The story may not be literally true. However, the cave is real, the pilgrims who came here for centuries were real and the faith behind the story is real. The seven sleepers are still part of two religions, on three continents and in many languages.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Cave of Seven Sleepers in Turkey or Jordan?
Both countries have one. In the Christian tradition the cave is at Ephesus, on Mount Pion near Selçuk, where excavations uncovered a church and hundreds of graves from late antiquity. Jordan’s claim is a cave at Al-Rajeb near Amman. In Turkey, Tarsus and Afşin also claim the sleepers.
Are the Seven Sleepers in the Bible?
No. The Seven Sleepers are not in the Bible. Their story is a Christian legend whose oldest copies are in Syriac, from the 5th century, and it was later told in Greek, Latin and many other languages. The Catholic and Orthodox churches still keep their feast days, and the Quran tells the story in Surah Al-Kahf (18:9–26).
How long did the Seven Sleepers sleep?
The versions do not agree. In the Christian legend, they went into the cave in the time of Emperor Decius, around 250 AD, and they woke in the time of Theodosius II, about two hundred years later. Medieval writers counted the years in different ways. The Quran says they stayed in the cave three hundred years and nine more (18:25).
Can you go inside the Cave of Seven Sleepers?
Not at the time of the last report. An Anadolu Agency report of November 2023 said the inside was closed while restoration went on, and visitors could only see it from a distance of 8 to 10 meters. Since then I have seen no news that it reopened. The ruined church and the vaults are still visible from outside.
Hire Tour Guide to the Cave of Seven Sleepers nearby Ephesus
I am a nationally licensed Turkish tour guide, and I live in Kuşadası, nearby Ephesus. For day guiding I cover Ephesus, İzmir and Pamukkale, and a stop at the Cave of Seven Sleepers is easy to add to a day in Ephesus with me. You can check my guiding rates and guiding areas, or write to me to hire me as your licensed guide.
I hope we will meet one day on the slopes of Mount Pion, and I will tell you the story of the seven young men in front of their cave.
The Story of Seven Sleepers is attracting people even today. There is no entrance fee to the Cave of Seven Sleepers. There is a ramp before you access to the cave, so I recommend good shoes if you want to visit this attraction. Contact me to learn more about the Cave of Seven Sleepers and to hire a tour guide to the Cave of Seven Sleepers nearby Ephesus. See you soon, Hasan Gülday.
