Cave of the Seven Sleepers

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The Cave of the Seven Sleepers (Arabic: كهف الرقيم, Kahf ar-Raqīm) is an archaeological and religious site in ar-Rajib, a village to the east of Amman, Jordan.^[1] It is claimed that this cave housed the Seven Sleepers, also known from Christian sources as the "Sleepers of Ephesus" and from the Qur’an as the "Companions of the Cave" (Arabic: اصحاب الكهف, romanized: aṣḥāb al kahf)—a group of young men who, according to Byzantine Christian and Islamic sources, fled the religious persecution of Roman emperor Decius.^[2][3] Legend has it that these men hid in a cave around AD 250, emerging miraculously centuries later - according to the Quran, 309 lunar years later.^[4] Rediscovered in 1951, it is one of several caves associated with the Seven Sleepers (see "Other contenders").