Ashâb al-Kahf, which is the name and subject of a part (sûrah) known as Surah Al-Kahf in the Qur’an, comes out as the protagonists of a historical event or events chain that are told in various forms in Muslim societies. The Ashâb al-Kahf event is one of the most important elements of the collective memory, the collective religious memory, and the social archive of the Muslims. As it is known, collective memory is a reconstruction of the past got with the data that is borrowed from now and is the means through which knowledge is passed between individuals and groups and from one generation to another. As a matter of fact, the social memory as the temporal foundation of social consciousness can be understood as the renewal of the accumulations of Maraş people who have passed from the present to the past, from the past to the present again and from now to the future by the rehabilitation and rebuilding of the Ashâf-ı Kehf in the Seljuks period in the case of Maraş people. The collective religious memory of today’s Kahramanmaraş has come out of history, been updated, and been reached the present with improvement and rebuilding of Ashâb al-Kahf in Afşin region in the Seljuks period and the story has come to the present day from there and it has resulted in that the Quranic story is the central of life. In this respect, the Seljuks, with the construction of the Ashab al-Kahf, had an important influence on the formation of the collective religious memory of Maraş. In this study, the researcher tries to understand the dimensions of this effect.
