Dhul-Qarnayn

Dhu al-Qarnayn, (Arabic: ذُو ٱلْقَرْنَيْن‎ Ḏū al-Qarnayn, [ðuː‿l.qar.najn]), Lit.: "He of the Two Horns"), also spelled Zu al-Qarnayn, appears in the Quran, Surah Al-Kahf (18), Ayahs 83-101 as 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 other apocalyptic writings report their destruction by God in a single night would usher in the Day of Resurrection (Yawm al-Qiyāmah).

Dhu al-Qarnayn has most popularly been identified as Alexander the Great with Peter Bietenholz arguing the origins of the story being in Alexander legends, however, Wheeler disagrees. Regarding Alexander identification, some Muslim scholars (including those from classical times) have differed, with, according to imam Maududi, modern Muslim scholarship also leaning in favour of identifying him with Cyrus the Great, while Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi has been in favour of Darius the Great.

Quran 18:83-101

The story of Dhu al-Qarnayn is related in Surah 18 of the Quran, al-Kahf ("The Cave"). According to Muslim accounts, 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 Dhu al-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:

A minority of Muslim commentators argue Gog and Magog here refers to some barbaric North Asian tribes from pre-Biblical times which have been free from Dhu al-Qarnayn's wall for a long time.

People identified as Dhu al-Qarnayn

Alexander Romance

According to Bietenholz, the story of Dhu al-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 Dhu al-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.

Dhu al-Qarnayn also journeys to the western and eastern extremities ("qarns", tips) of the Earth. Ernst claims that Dhu al-Qarnayn finding the sun setting in a "muddy spring" in the West is equivalent to the "poisonous sea" found by Alexander in the Syriac legend. In the Syriac story Alexander tested the sea by sending condemned prisoners into it, but the Quran allegedly changes this into a general administration of justice. In the East both the Syrian legend and the Quran, according to Ernst, have Alexander/Dhu al-Qarnayn 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 Dhu al-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.

Several notable Muslim commentators, including Ibn Kathir, Ibn Taymiyyah and Naser Makarem Shirazi, have strongly disagreed with the Alexander identification. Among Western academics, Brannon Wheeler has argued that the alleged similarities between Alexander romances and the Dhu al-Qarnayn story are actually based on later commentaries of the Qur'an rather than the Qur'an itself.

Later literature

Dhu al-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 Dhu al-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 Dhu al-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 Dhu al-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 Dhu al-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.

Cyrus the Great

In modern times, many Muslim scholars have argued in favour of Dhu al-Qarnayn being actually Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Persian Empire. Among Muslims, first promoted by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, this theory has generated wider acceptance over the years. Wheeler accepts the possibility but points out the absence of such a theory by classical Muslim commentators.

According to Muslim records, the Dhu al-Qarnayn story was revealed on the inquisition of Jews who held a high opinion of Cyrus and is also honoured in the Bible; the "He of the Two Horns" (lit. meaning of Dhu al-Qarnayn) is allegedly referring to the two-horned ram mentioned in Book of Daniel, Chapter 8. Furthermore, Cyrus' conquests also align with the account of Dhu al-Qarnayn as Cyrus was also a great King who expanded his empire in three directions, excluding the South.

Others

Muslim commentators objecting to the Alexander theory have commonly used theological arguments for their conclusions: Alexander lived only a short time, whereas Dhu al-Qarnayn (according to some) lived for 700 years as a sign of God's blessing; Dhu al-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 suggested candidates are:

• 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.