The Seven Sleepers The relationship between faith and man’s best friend
Westerners have difficulty coming to terms with some aspects of Islamic teachings and traditions. This is not surprising, given the fractious nature of these even before the death of the Prophet himself. The hatreds and prejudices of Shia, Sunni and Sufi over the centuries are quite as bad as those that for so long divided and shamed Christians.
However, if there is one thing everyone knows about Muslims, it is that they abhor dogs. This is understandable, for except for some desert princes with their love of hunting dogs, most Muslims are conditioned by life in towns and cities. There they see only pariah dogs, dirty feeders eating dirty things. No wonder they draw their robes away in disgust as they pass them on the street, and will not have dogs near them or in their houses.
Yet for every rule in religion there is all too often an exception. So it is with Muslims and dogs, as I have just discovered.
I was recently reading, while in pursuit of something quite different, about the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
It will be recalled that they were martyrs, mere boys, who were walled up alive in the middle 3rd Century, and who were discovered asleep in the year 479. The fame of the story spread quickly far beyond Ephesus, and in due course found a lasting place in The Golden Legend of Jacob of Voragine in the 13th Century, a widely read book.
Fr Alban Butler, in his famous Lives of the Saints published in the 1750s, a classic of Catholic hagiography, supposed that what was discovered were not the sleepers alive, but merely their remains (perhaps mummified). Down to modern times the cave itself remains a site of pilgrimage (as it had been, it seems, even in much earlier pagan times), much visited by tourists.
Be that as it may be, the legend was later adopted into Muslim tradition in a slightly different form in The Koran (Sura 18: 9-26, ‘The Cave’). The relics were, after all, recovered only 70 years before the birth of the prophet and were widely talked about throughout the Middle East in his formative years. This is an interesting instance of how Christian elements were absorbed into Islam.
The hero of the Muslim version was, oddly enough, a dog, called Kratim, who was allegedly found standing guard over the sleepers when the cave was opened. If that seems strange, stranger things were to come.
Because of the dog’s service he was supposed by Muslim tradition to have been assumed into Heaven. There he sat beside the Ass of Balaam.
Nor were they alone. Some eight other animals were also granted admission: the ant of Solomon, the whale of Jonah, the ram of Ishmael, the calf of Abraham, the she-camel of Saleh (a pre-Islamic Arab prophet), the cuckoo of Queen Belkis of Sheba, the ox of Moses and the mare of Mohammed.
Expressions of love
The idea that animals go to Heaven is not one which many Christian theologians have entertained. Admirers of St Francis of Assisi, however, and lovers of animals in general have often argued that people’s pets will be with them in the next life. To many others the idea seems absurd. Yet, taking all expressions of love as an aspect of God’s love of creation and of humankind, perhaps we should not be too hasty.
Perhaps in the legend in The Koran and the feelings of St Francis’ devotees there is the germ of an important idea relating to our relations with each other, with created life in general, and with the author of all things.
Certainly to give some thought to how man has treated animals, and indeed creation as a whole, in past millennia can do us all no harm. Perhaps if the Muslim idea that even such a creature so despised in this world as a dog can find an honoured place in Heaven, there is hope for all kinds of sinners.
We, in our lack of insight, cannot set any boundary to the limitless mercy of God – which seems to be a notion well fitted to this Year of Mercy.