Ahl Al Kahf

About Ahl Al Kahf

Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as the Khazali Network, is an Iraqi Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary organization previously active in the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War. During the Iraq War, it was the largest of the Special Groups (Iraq). It's part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in the 41st, 42nd, and 43rd Brigades, cooperating with the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.

The Cave of Ahl al-Kahf (Kahf al-Raqim) in the village of al-Rajib east of Amman, about 10 km from the city centre near Abu Alanda, is the place many Muslim scholars identify as the cave of the Companions of the Cave whose story the Qur'an tells in Surat al-Kahf: young believers who fled a tyrannical king, took refuge in a cave, were put to sleep by God for many years and then awakened. The village name al-Rajib is noted for its closeness to "al-Raqim" in the verse "Or do you think that the Companions of the Cave and al-Raqim...". The journalist Taysir Thabyan discovered the site in 1951 and the archaeologist Rafiq Wafa al-Dajani led its excavation. At its core the cave is an ancient rock-cut burial chamber of the Byzantine period with seven stone sarcophagi and eight smaller sealed tombs in which bones remain, some of them visible through small openings. Above the cave are the remains of a Byzantine church converted into a mosque in the Umayyad period and renovated under the Tulunids in the 9th century, so the place has been held sacred and prayed in for centuries; a modern mosque named for Ahl al-Kahf stands in front of it, and a Byzantine cemetery lies about 500 m to the west. Whatever one's view on the identification, the site offers a moment of reflection on a Qur'anic story Muslims recite every Friday.

Where:

Amman, Jordan