Surah Al-Kahf: its four stories, and why it is read on Fridays
Surah Al-Kahf, its four stories and the occasion behind them - and its disputed places in Tafsir al-Muyassar and in Tafsir al-Safi: what the inscription was, "If Allah wills", who al-Khidr was, and the hidden shirk in its last verse.
Al-Kahf, "The Cave", is one of the surahs Muslims return to most often: many read it every Friday. This guide places the surah, walks through its four stories, reads its disputed places in the two commentaries, and sets out what is reported about reciting it — with each report attributed to whoever transmitted it.
The Arabic of every commentary quoted below is on the Arabic version of this page and on the page of each verse; the English renderings are ours.
Where it sits
Al-Kahf is the eighteenth surah of the Quran. It has 110 verses, was revealed in Mecca, and runs from the fifteenth juz into the sixteenth. It opens with praise for the Book itself:
[All] praise is [due] to Allah, who has sent down upon His Servant the Book and has not made therein any deviance.
The occasion: three questions
Al-Safi narrates from al-Qummi an occasion of revelation that accounts for how the whole surah is built. Quraysh sent three men to the Jewish scholars at Najran to bring back questions with which to test the Prophet. Among what they were told to ask:
Ask him about young men of the first times who went out and disappeared and slept — how long they stayed in their sleep until they woke, and how many they were, and what thing was with them that was not of them, and what their story was. And ask him about Moses, when God commanded him to follow the learned man and learn from him.
And then the third question, about Dhul-Qarnayn. So the surah's three narratives — the youths, Moses and the learned man, and Dhul-Qarnayn — are answers to three questions the Prophet was asked, not stories gathered by coincidence. It is a reading al-Muyassar does not give, and it explains the wording of the fourth story: "And they ask you…".
What was "the inscription"?
Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription were, among Our signs, a wonder?
Al-Muyassar takes it as the tablet on which their names were written.
Al-Safi is more specific, narrating from al-Qummi:
As for the inscription, it was two tablets of copper, inscribed, on which was written the affair of the youths and the matter of their faith, and what Decianus the king wanted of them, and how their affair and their state had been.
He also narrates from al-Ayyashi, from al-Sadiq, that they were people who went missing, and the king of that land wrote their names and their fathers' and their clans' names on sheets of lead. The two views are close — a written tablet — and al-Safi adds the king's name and what the tablet was made of.
The first story: the people of the cave
A few young men believed among a people who did not, and took refuge in a cave. Their prayer:
[Mention] when the youths retreated to the cave and said, "Our Lord, grant us from Yourself mercy and prepare for us from our affair right guidance."
It is a story about holding to faith when you are few, and about God protecting those who turn to Him.
"If Allah wills": a courtesy, or a ruling about oaths?
In the middle of the story of the youths comes the instruction that became the most-said phrase in Arabic:
And never say of anything, "Indeed, I will do that tomorrow,"
Except [when adding], "If Allah wills." And remember your Lord when you forget [it] and say, "Perhaps my Lord will guide me to what is nearer than this to right conduct."
Al-Muyassar reads it as a general courtesy: do not say of something you resolve on that you will do it tomorrow unless you attach your words to God's will and say "if God wills"; and "remember your Lord when you forget" means say it whenever you forget, since remembering God drives away forgetfulness.
Al-Safi attaches the second half specifically to oaths, narrating from al-Sadiq:
That is about the oath. If you say, "By God, I will not do such and such," then when you remember that you did not add the exception, say: if God wills.
Then he narrates something that extends the window strikingly, from the Commander of the Faithful:
The exception in an oath holds whenever it is remembered, even if it is after forty mornings — and then he recited this verse.
So the exception in an oath is valid whenever the one who swore remembers it, even forty days later — a legal ruling al-Muyassar does not give at this verse. Al-Safi pairs it with a matching occasion: the Prophet told a group "come tomorrow and I will tell you" without adding the exception, and Gabriel withheld from him for forty days, after which the verse came down.
Al-Safi adds a second angle, from al-Baqir, tying the verse back to Adam: he and his wife said "yes, our Lord, we will not approach it" without adding the exception, so God left them in that matter to themselves.
The second story: the owner of two gardens
A parable of two men. One was given two gardens, grew proud of them, and forgot who gave them; the other reminded him.
And present to them an example of two men: We granted to one of them two gardens of grapevines, and We bordered them with palm trees and placed between them [fields of] crops.
It is about the trial of wealth: a blessing is lost when its owner credits himself with it.
The third story: Moses and the righteous servant — who was he?
Moses set out in search of knowledge, and where the two seas meet he found the man the Quran describes this way:
And they found a servant from among Our servants to whom we had given mercy from us and had taught him from Us a [certain] knowledge.
Here is a point of agreement worth pausing on: both commentaries name him al-Khidr.
Al-Muyassar says he is al-Khidr, a prophet of God whom God has taken — affirming both his prophethood and his death.
Al-Safi says "he is al-Khidr, as the reports from them have widely established", and then gives the scene of the meeting: Moses greeted him and he returned the greeting, and when Moses asked to follow him his answer was:
He said: I have been entrusted with a matter you cannot bear, and you have been entrusted with a matter I cannot bear.
That sentence is the whole story in miniature: a knowledge held in trust that no one else can carry — and Moses's knowledge likewise.
Then came the three events — the holed boat, the boy, the rebuilt wall — each hiding a wisdom Moses could not see at the time. It is about the trial of knowledge, and its limits.
The fourth story: Dhul-Qarnayn
And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about Dhul-Qarnayn. Say, "I will recite to you about him a report."
A ruler given power across the earth, who built the barrier against Gog and Magog and credited every success to his Lord. It is about the trial of power, and power as a trust.
What joins them
Many readers have noticed that the four stories map onto four trials: of faith, of wealth, of knowledge and of power. The surah ends with what guards against all four.
The last verse: the hidden shirk
Say, "I am only a man like you, to whom has been revealed that your god is one God. So whoever would hope for the meeting with his Lord - let him do righteous work and not associate in the worship of his Lord anyone."
Al-Muyassar reads the closing clause plainly: let him do righteous work in accordance with God's law, and associate no one else with Him in worship.
Al-Safi builds a whole subject on this verse — ostentation, and he makes it a form of shirk. He narrates from al-Baqir that the Prophet was asked about this verse and said:
Whoever prays to be seen by people is an idolater; whoever gives alms to be seen by people is an idolater; whoever fasts to be seen by people is an idolater; whoever performs the pilgrimage to be seen by people is an idolater; whoever does any work God commanded him to do in order to be seen by people is an idolater. And God does not accept the work of one who acts for show.
He then adds a qualification that the subject cannot do without:
He was asked about a man who does something good and a person sees it and that pleases him. He said: there is no harm in it. There is no one who does not like good to be known of him among people — so long as he did not do it for that.
So not everything that pleases a servant about his good becoming known is ostentation; what settles it is whether the work was done for that. Al-Safi then gives a practical instance, from al-Rida:
He was performing ablution for the prayer, and a man wanted to pour the water over his hands, and he refused and recited this verse, and said: here I am performing ablution for the prayer, and it is an act of worship, and I dislike that anyone should share it with me.
And al-Kashani adds a comment of his own that keeps the subject from running to excess:
I say: this is another reading of the verse, and perhaps it is a matter of scrupulousness, while the other is prohibition.
That is, al-Rida's act was scrupulousness, not a prohibition; the prohibition is in doing the work for show. Al-Safi adds that one who acts for show is "an idolater who is forgiven" — and explains it himself: this is not the shirk of which God said "Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him" (An-Nisa 48), because that is manifest shirk and this is hidden shirk.
Where they agree
- That the surah is Meccan, that its stories turn on the four trials, and that its safeguard is in the last verse.
- That "the inscription" is a written tablet — al-Muyassar and al-Safi agree, and al-Safi adds its description.
- That the righteous servant in the story of Moses is al-Khidr.
- That "if Allah wills" attaches one's resolve to God's will, and that saying it is called for.
- That the shirk in the last verse covers working for anyone other than God; the difference is in the detail of its rulings, not in the principle.
What each commentary adds
- Al-Muyassar is brief, states of al-Khidr that he was a prophet whom God has taken, and reads "remember your Lord when you forget" as a general remembrance that drives away forgetfulness.
- Al-Safi gives the surah's occasion of revelation — three questions the Prophet was asked — identifies the inscription as two copper tablets and names the king, attaches "remember your Lord when you forget" to the exception in an oath and allows it up to forty mornings, and builds on the last verse a treatment of ostentation with its qualifications and its distinction between manifest and hidden shirk.
Counted against the mushaf
- The surah has 110 verses. Opening with praise is shared by five surahs — Al-Fatihah (after the basmalah), Al-An'am, Al-Kahf, Saba and Fatir — and Al-Kahf is the second longest of them, after Al-An'am.
- The word rendered "the inscription", ar-raqim, occurs nowhere else in the Quran but this verse.
- Dhul-Qarnayn appears only in this surah, in three verses (83, 86 and 94).
- Gog and Magog appear in only two places: Al-Kahf 94 and Al-Anbiya 96.
What is reported about reciting it
- Sahih Muslim reports from Abu al-Darda' that the Prophet said whoever memorises ten verses from the beginning of Surah Al-Kahf is protected from the Dajjal.
- Al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi report from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri that whoever reads it on Friday is given light between the two Fridays; hadith scholars differ on whether that report goes back to the Prophet or stops at the Companion.
Whatever one concludes about the reports, the surah is read for what is in it — and Friday is a good weekly appointment to come back to it.
Sources
- The Quran text — the Madinah mushaf, Hafs from 'Asim, King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran. English renderings of verses are the Sahih International translation this site serves.
- Tafsir al-Muyassar — a panel of commentators, King Fahd Complex.
- Tafsir al-Safi — al-Fayd al-Kashani.
Al-Mizan fi Tafsir al-Quran, by al-Tabatabai, is also served on this site's verse pages, but this article does not draw on it.