What is "seven sleepers"

The Seven Sleepers ( Arabic: اصحاب الکھف aṣḥāb al kahf, "companions of the cave") of Ephesus are legendary people in a story of a group of youths who hide inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, to escape a persecution. The king forced all his kingdom to worship idols and whoever did not would be killed. These men escaped as their faith in God (their belief varies by regional origin) was strong, and they refused to worship idols. The story is one of the many examples of the legend about a man who falls asleep and years after wakes up to find the world changed.

Another version is that Decius ordered them imprisoned in a closed cave to die there as punishment for being Christians. Having fallen asleep inside the cave, they purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying.

The earliest version of this story comes from the Syrian bishop Jacob of Sarug (c. 450–521), which is itself derived from an earlier Greek source, now lost. An outline of this tale appears in Gregory of Tours (b. 538, d. 594), and in Paul the Deacon's (b. 720, d. 799) History of the Lombards. The best-known Western version of the story appears in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend.

The Roman Martyrology mentions the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus under the date of 27 July (June according to Vatican II calendar), as follows: "Commemoration of the seven Holy Sleepers of Ephesus, who, it is recounted, after undergoing martyrdom, rest in peace, awaiting the day of resurrection." The Byzantine Calendar commemorates them with feasts on 4 August and 22 October.

The story has its highest prominence, however, in the Muslim world; it is told in the Qur'an ( Surah 18, verse 9–26). The Quranic rendering of this story does not state exactly the number of sleepers Surah 18, verse 22. It also gives the number of years that they slept as 300 solar years (equivalent to 309 lunar years). Unlike the Christian story, the Islamic version includes mention of a dog who accompanied the youths into the cave, and was also asleep, but when people passed by the cave it looked as if the dog was just keeping watch at the entrance, making them afraid of seeing what is in the cave once they saw the dog. In Islam, these youths are referred to as "The People of the Cave".

Seven Sleepers is a Japan-only EP by the British rock band Feeder. It was the first ever release by the band after their label, Echo, was downstreamed into a copyrights exploitation company and as a result announced that they would not be releasing any new records or signing any new artists. This meant that Feeder were without a UK record label, and that, for the duration of being unsigned in the UK, they could not release any material in their home country.

Before the band's 2008 winter tour, there were plans to release a tour-only EP which would be available at merchandise stalls at the venues the band would be playing. In 2007, the band entered the The Crypt studios to record their sixth studio album, Silent Cry; at the same time, Echo were up for sale and were in financial trouble, and would not release the album until a buyer was found. With EMI offering a price that was too low for the label, and many delays in the album already having been caused, Echo decided to release the album with hopes that it would bring the label back afloat, after the commercial success achieved with Feeder's previous release The Singles. However, with BBC Radio 1 not playing its first single " We Are the People" and a relatively low chart placing for the single at #25, alongside the album having very little promotion due to Echo's financial worries, the album quickly dropped out of the top 75 weekly album listing, despite an unexpected chart entry at #8 due to a lack of commercial pre-release awareness.

Amongst the recordings for the album were a series of tracks that did not make the final cut, and were used as b-sides for "We Are the People" and other singles that were due to be released. However, due to the album's underwhelming sales, no more singles containing those tracks were released, meaning that the planned b-sides were locked in the vaults. Later on in the year, the band planned to self-release a tour EP, and included a few new songs for it, with those being "Seven Sleepers" and "Snowblind", meaning that they would be exclusive to the release. However, due to contract laws meaning that they were still under Echo, this never materialised.

The following year, the band were still signed to their Japanese label Victor, meaning that they could still release the tracks over there anyway. Echo also decided not to claim ownership of the new tracks, with only Victor doing so. As a result, this became Feeder's first ever release not to have any release involvement from the label, with no Echo imprint appearing on the inlay and the obi strip. The EP was then completed, with a series of already released tracks making the total up to six. Many fans aware of the EP claim this to be the sort of direction the band should go towards for their next album, after giving Silent Cry a positive reception.