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Dhul-Qarnayn, (Template:Lang-ar ḏū'l-qarnayn, IPA: [ðuːlqarˈnajn]), "he of the two horns" (or “he of the two ages”), appears in Surah 18 verses 83-101 of the Quran one who travels to east and west and erects a wall between mankind and Gog and Magog (called Ya'juj and Ma'juj). Elsewhere the Quran tells how the end of the world would be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the wall, and their destruction by God in a single night would usher in the Day of Resurrection (Yawm al-Qiyāmah). The story has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great.

Surat al-Kahf (surah 18), verses 83-101

The story of Dhul-Qarnayn is related in chapter 18 (Surat al-Kahf, "The Cave") of the Quran. This chapter was revealed to Muhammad when his tribe, Quraysh, sent two men to discover whether the Jews, with their superior knowledge of the scriptures, could advise them on whether Muhammad was a true prophet of God. The rabbis told them to ask Muhammad about three things, one of them "about a man who travelled and reached the east and the west of the earth, what was his story". "If he tells you about these things, then he is a prophet, so follow him, but if he does not tell you, then he is a man who is making things up, so deal with him as you see fit." (Verses 18:83-98).

The verses of the chapter reproduced below show Dhul-Qarnayn traveling first to the Western edge of the world where he sees the sun set in a muddy spring, then to the furthest East where he sees it rise from the ocean, and finally northward to a place in the mountains where he finds a people oppressed by Gog and Magog:

The Alexander Romance and Dhul-Qarnayn

Alexander Romance

The story of Dhul-Qarnayn has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great current in the Middle East in the early years of the Christian era. According to these the Scythians, the descendants of Gog and Magog, once defeated one of Alexander's generals, upon which Alexander built a wall in the Caucasus mountains to keep them out of civilised lands (the basic elements are found in Flavius Josephus). The legend went through much further elaboration in subsequent centuries before eventually finding its way into the Quran through a Syrian version.

The reasons behind the name "Two-Horned" are somewhat obscure: the scholar al-Tabari (839-923 CE) held it was because he went from one extremity ("horn") of the world to the other, but it may ultimately derive from the image of Alexander wearing the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon, as popularised on coins throughout the Hellenistic Near East. The wall Dhul-Qarnayn builds on his northern journey may have reflected a distant knowledge of the Great Wall of China (the 12th century scholar al-Idrisi drew a map for Roger of Sicily showing the "Land of Gog and Magog" in Mongolia), or of various Sassanid Persian walls built in the Caspian area against the northern barbarians, or a conflation of the two.

Dhul-Qarneyn also journeys to the western and eastern extremities ("qarns", tips) of the Earth. In the west he finds the sun setting in a "muddy spring", equivalent to the "poisonous sea" which Alexander found in the Syriac legend. In the Syriac original Alexander tested the sea by sending condemned prisoners into it, but the Quran changes this into a general administration of justice. In the east both the Syrian legend and the Quran have Alexander/Dhul-Qarneyn find a people who live so close to the rising sun that they have no protection from its heat.

"Qarn" also means "period" or "century", and the name Dhul-Qarnayn therefore has a symbolic meaning as "He of the Two Ages", the first being the mythological time when the wall is built and the second the age of the end of the world when Allah's shariah, the divine law, is removed and Gog and Magog are to be set loose. Modern Islamic apocalyptic writers, holding to a literal reading, put forward various explanations for the absence of the wall from the modern world, some saying that Gog and Magog were the Mongols and that the wall is now gone, others that both the wall and Gog and Magog are present but invisible.

Later literature

Dhul-Qarnayn the traveller was a favourite subject for later writers. In one of many Arabic and Persian versions of the meeting of Alexander with the Indian sages, the poet and philosopher Al-Ghazali (Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, 1058–1111) wrote of how Dhul-Qarnayn came across a people who had no possessions but dug graves at the doors of their houses; their king explained that they did this because the only certainty in life is death. Ghazali's version later made its way into the Thousand and One Nights.

The Sufi poet Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, 1207-1273), perhaps the most famous of medieval Persian poets, described Dhul Qarnayn's eastern journey. The hero ascends Mount Qof, the "mother" of all other mountains (identified with the Alborz mountains on the northern border of Iran), which is made of emerald and forms a ring encircling the entire Earth with veins under every land. At Dhul Qarnayn's request the mountain explains the origin of earthquakes: when God wills, the mountain causes one of its veins to throb, and thus an earthquake results. Elsewhere on the great mountain Dhul Qarnayn meets Esrafil (the archangel Raphael), standing ready to blow the trumpet on the Day of Judgement.

The Malay-language Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain traces the ancestry of several Southeast Asian royal families, such as the Sumatra Minangkabau royalty, from Iskandar Zulkarnain, through Raja Rajendra Chola (Raja Suran, Raja Chola) in the Malay Annals.

People identified with Dhul-Qarnayn

Muslim commentators generally identified Dhul Qarnayn with Alexander the Great, but some have objected that this cannot be so: Alexander lived only a short time, whereas Dhul-Qarnayn lived for 700 years as a sign of God's blessing; Dhul-Qarnayn worshipped only one god, while Alexander was a polytheist, proudly referring to himself at times as the "Son of Ra" or the "Son of Zeus". Other candidates have been suggested:

• Imru'l-Qays (died 328 CE), a prince of the Lakhmids of southern Mesopotamia, an ally first of Persia and then of Rome, celebrated in romance for his exploits.
• "Messiah ben Joseph", a fabulous military saviour expected by Yemenite Jews and associated in folk-lore with Dhu Nawas, a semi-legendary 6th century Yemenite king.
• Cyrus the Great, the 6th century BCE Achaemenid Persian conqueror, although there is no evidence that the earliest Muslim commentators made this connection.

See also

• Alexander the Great in legend
• Alexander the Great in the Quran
• Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain

References

Citations

1. ^ Netton 2006, p. 72.
2. Cook 2005, p. 8,10.
3. ^ Bietenholz 1994, p. 122-123.
4. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 57 fn.3.
5. Pinault 1992, p. 181 fn.71.
6. Glassé & Smith 2003, p. 39.
7. Wheeler 2013, p. 96.
8. ^ Ernst 2011, p. 133.
9. Glassé & Smith 2003, p. 38.
10. Cook 2005, p. 205-206.
11. Yamanaka & Nishio 2006, p. 103-105. sfn error: no target: CITEREFYamanakaNishio2006 (help)
12. Berberian 2014, p. 118-119.
13. Early Modern History ISBN 981-3018-28-3 page 60
14. Balai Seni Lukis Negara (Malaysia) (1999). Seni dan nasionalisme: dulu & kini. Balai Seni Lukis Negara.
15. S. Amran Tasai; Djamari; Budiono Isas (2005). Sejarah Melayu: sebagai karya sastra dan karya sejarah : sebuah antologi. Pusat Bahasa, Departemen Pendidikan Nasional. p. 67. ISBN 978-979-685-524-7.
16. Radzi Sapiee (2007). Berpetualang Ke Aceh: Membela Syiar Asal. Wasilah Merah Silu Enterprise. p. 69. ISBN 978-983-42031-1-5.
17. Dewan bahasa. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. 1980. pp. 333, 486.
18. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 57 fn.2.
19. Ball 2002, p. 97-98.
20. Wasserstrom 2014, p. 61-62.
21. Wheeler 2013, p. 16.

Bibliography

• Ball, Warwick (2002). Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire. Routledge. ISBN 9781134823871. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Berberian, Manuel (2014). Earthquakes and Coseismic Surface Faulting on the Iranian Plateau. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0444632975. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Bietenholz, Peter G. (1994). Historia and fabula: myths and legends in historical thought from antiquity to the modern age. Brill. ISBN 978-9004100633. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cook, David (2005). Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815630586. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ernst, Carl W. (2011). How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781134823871. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Glassé, Cyril; Smith, Huston (2003). The New Encyclopedia of Islam. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 9780759101906. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Netton, Ian Richard (2006). A Popular Dictionary of Islam. Routledge. ISBN 9781135797737. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pinault, David (1992). Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. BRILL. ISBN 978-9004095304. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• van Bladel, Kevin (2008). "The Alexander Legend in the Qur'an 18:83-102". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Qurʼān in Its Historical Context. Routledge. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Van Donzel, Emeri J.; Schmidt, Andrea Barbara (2010). Gog and Magog in Early Eastern Christian and Islamic Sources. Brill. ISBN 978-9004174160. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wasserstrom, Steven M. (2014). Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis Under Early Islam. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400864133. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wheeler, Brannon M. (2013). Moses in the Qur'an and Islamic Exegesis. Routledge. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Yamanaka,, Yuriko; Nishio, Tetsuo (2006). The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781850437680. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

Further reading

• Sahih Bukhari, English Translation, Hadith number 6326
• Kathir, 2002. Tafsir Ibn Kathir. Surah Al-Kahf. Electronic web-only document last updated 26 October 2002. Tafsir.com. Extracted on 22 September 2010 from https://web.archive.org/web/20070928012021/http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=18&tid=29908

v t e Cyrus the Great
Teispids, Achaemenid Empire
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Battles	Persian Revolt Hyrba Persian Border Pasargadae Pteria Thymbra Sardis Opis
Related	"Cyrus" (name) Pasargadae Cyrus Cylinder Cyropaedia Tomb Cyrus in the Bible Edict of Cyrus Cyrus in the Quran Dhul-Qarnayn Kay Bahman Cyrus the Great Day Cyrus the Great (screenplay) Ciro riconosciuto Cyropolis
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• Islamic mythology
• Alexander the Great in legend
• Cyrus the Great
• People of the Quran
• Arabic words and phrases
• Mythological kings
• Dhul-Qarnayn