Who Was Daqyanus? The king the sleepers fled in Islamic History

Before the worldBefore Adam

The first nationsAdam to Shuayb

Egypt and Bani Israilc. 1300–1000 BCE

Bani Israil and Romec. 1000 BCE – 250 CE

Arabia before IslamUp to 570 CE

Enemies of the Prophet ﷺ610–632 CE

After the Prophet ﷺ632–1000 CE

Crusades and conquests1090–1502 CE

The end of timeStill to come

Ten signs before the Hour

Isa ibn Maryam descends
A landslide in the east
A landslide in the west
A landslide in Arabia
The smoke
The sun rises from the west
The Beast of the earth
A fire from Yemen drives people to their gathering

Sahih Muslim lists ten major signs before the Hour without fixing their order. This follows a common order given by the scholars. Sahih Muslim 2901a ↗

Villains of history29 / 76

دقيانوس

Daqyanus

The king the sleepers fledc. 250 CE (traditional)

Relied onForcing his people to idols

Undone byThree hundred and nine years

A pagan king who forced his people to worship idols and punished believers. A few young men fled his city and hid in a cave, where Allah put them to sleep.

How it ended

When they woke, his reign was long gone and the city had come to believe.

And We made firm their hearts when they stood up and said, "Our Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth. Never will we invoke besides Him any deity. We would have certainly spoken, then, an excessive transgression.
Quran 18:14

The lessonThe tyrant ruled for a few years; the young men's story is recited for ever.

In the Quran

18:9-26

Stood against: the People of the Cave
Source: In the Quran, named by the commentatorsThe Quran does not name the king. The commentators call him Daqyanus, often taken to be the Roman emperor Decius, who persecuted Christians around 250 CE.

Every villain in Islamic history, from Iblis to the Dajjal

Each entry is drawn from the Quran, authentic hadith (with links to sunnah.com), the classical commentators and the historians. Companions who fought Islam and later became Muslim are not included, nor are figures Muslims disagree about.