As with many religions and faiths, beliefs regarding the Seven Sleepers have been included both in Christianity and Islam. As a result of this, the Seven Sleepers story has been adressed, discussed and reached the present day featured as a subject in books regarded as credible both by the Eastern and Western societies, some religious texts and myths. In the Turkish culture, the Seven Sleepers story which takes place especially in the religious works with the impact of Islam, does not take place only in the religous texts but also has become one of the texts descripting a significant scene of the Turkish language and literature. The Seven Sleepers narrative has formed the basis of many literature works and it has contributed in the production of verbal and written literary works. The Seven Sleepers event that took place thousands of years ago echoed in the Turkish poems incidentally as the art of reference and sometimes as a detached work as well as taking place very often in the Turkish literature’s prose works. Particularly, the names of the cave friends called the Seven Sleepers are seen in poems and the art of reference is thus done by recalling this event. Treated as a subject mostly by the Ottoman poets, this story is addressed by the minstrels even if just a little. In the mesnevi “Ashab-ı Kehf” and the “Yediler” semai written by Ahmet Çıtak who was a minstrel brought up in one of the Northern districts of Elbistan in the twentieth century, the story in question is told according to the artist’s fiction. This study doesn’t cover any research on the “Yediler” semai but rather emphasizes only on the Çıtak’s mesnevi and research and evaluations are made on the aforesaid mesnevi. In the introduction section of the study, opinions and thoughts on the reflection of the Seven Sleepers, which took its subject from the Quran, on the Turkish literature and poetry were expressed. Later, attention was drawn to the dreams seen by both Ahmet Çıtak and his father, which were influential on his life and his beginning to poetry. Then, the context of the formation of his mesnevi and identifications in the direction that this context stemmed from the Quran were emphasized. Text analysis was carried out in the later parts of the study in terms of form and content by using the classical text review method. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the Çıtak’s mesnevi mentioning the Seven Sleepers story originating from the Quran, to examine the mesnevi text and to reveal the reflections of an ancient story to the 20th century Turkish folk poetry.

Seven Sleepers Story, Turkish poetry, Ahmet Çıtak, masnavi.