Page 147 - Perished Nations

The cave in Tarsus that is thought to
belong to the Companions of the Cave.

stated that the name of the mountain was "Pencilus" and that it was in Tar-
sus. The name that is pronounced as "Pencilus" may sometimes be prono-
unced as "Bencilus". According to him, the difference between the words
is caused by different pronunciations of the letter "B" or by the loss of a
letter from the original word which is called "historical word abrasion". 48
Fakhruddin ar-Razi, another well known Qur'anic scholar, explains in
his work that "even though this place is called Ephesus, the basic intenti-
on is to say Tarsus here, because Ephesus is just another name of Tarsus". 49
In addition, in the commentaries of Qadi al-Baidawi and an-Nasafi, in
the commentaries of al-Jalalayn and in at-Tibyan, in the commentaries of
Elmali and Omar Nasuhi Bilmen, and many other scholars, this place is
specified as "Tarsus". Besides, all of these commentators explain the sen-
tence of the seventeenth verse, "the sun, when it rose declined to the right
from their cave, and when it set, turned away from them to the left", by
saying that the mouth of the cave in the mountain looked towards the
north. 50
The residence of the Companions of the Cave was a subject of interest
also at the time of the Ottoman Empire and some research was done on
the subject. There is some correspondence and an exchange of informati-
on on the subject in the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry. For ins-
tance, in a letter sent to the Treasury Superior of the Ottoman State by the

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