Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 25 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:25

وَلَبِثُوا۟ فِى كَهْفِهِمْ ثَلَـٰثَ مِا۟ئَةٍ سِنِينَ وَٱزْدَادُوا۟ تِسْعًا

“And they remained in their cave for three hundred years and exceeded by nine.[786]”

Saheeh International

Essence

After fifteen ayat of refusing figures the surah gives one, and in the next breath hands it back.

A reflection

A number given, and immediately let go

Here at last is a figure, and most readers take it as the surah finally supplying the facts. Two things in the text itself make that reading uncomfortable.

The first is that the commentaries divide over whose words these are. One view reads the ayah as a report of what people were saying, continuing the list of guesses that began three ayat earlier. It cites a Companion's copy of the Qur'an, reported as reading "and they said" before this clause. The other view takes it as Allah's own statement of the period.

The second is harder to get round. The very next ayah says: Say, Allah knows best how long they remained. A commentary notes that this resembles a refutation of what has just been said.

So the figure arrives, and whatever its source, it is not left in the reader's hands as something to hold up.

In an old parish survey of a lead-mining valley the shaft depths are listed. Against several of them the compiler has written a note: as reported by the miners. He has not left the figure out. He has recorded it, and recorded what it rests on, which is men's word about the bottom of a hole nobody present has measured.

That is this ayah's position, three centuries of it.

You are being given a number and taught, in the same breath, what to do with a number.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.