Abstract
The Story of Seven Sleepers: Hâzâ Kıssa-i Ashâbü’l-Kehf
In the Classical Turkish Literature that gives a wide
coverage to the story of Seven Sleepers, many masnavis
on this issue have been written. One of them is situated in
the Istanbul University, Faculty of Arts library, ND
2495-286, Hâzâ Kıssa-i Ashâbü’l-Kehf which was written
by a poet pseudonym Ahdî. This work, which was written
by a poet that we have no information about other than
his pseudonym, is composed of 17 folios and written with
the calligraphy of naskh. Usually, there are 11 lines on
each page. The work was copied in 1152/1739 by the
copyist Ahmed bin İsmail İzmirî. The text was written
with the meter type of masnavi and composed of 312
couplets. It was written with the arûzpattern of fâ‘ilâtün/
fâ ‘ilâtün/fâ‘ilün and it was translated from Arabic to
Turkish. As happens with many other Ashâb-ı Kehf texts,
this text is also belonged to the story-teller İbn Abbâs. In
the analysis part, the abstract of the text is given and it
was focused on some important ingredients such as Hz.
İsâ, Suhuf-ı Mûsâ (revelation pages of Mûsâ), şeytan-ı
racîm (cursed devil), Dakyanus, Amâlık, mağara (cave),
gûy u çevgân (the game of polo), and kedi and fare (cat
and mouse). In the text in which it was tried to determine
some of the features of the narration mode of masnavi,
some notes and explanations which was possibly written
by the copyist on the manuscript was presented in a
chart.
Keywords
Ashâb-ı Kehf, Classical Turkish Literature, masnavi.