The story of Dhul-Qarnayn (in Arabic ذو القرنين, literally "The Two-Horned One", also transliterated as Zul-Qarnain or Zulqarnain), mentioned in the Quran, may be a reference to Alexander III of Macedon (356â€"323 BC), popularly known as Alexander the Great.
Dhul-Qarnayn was a well-known figure in the lore of the ancient dwellers of the Arabian Peninsula. The majority of traditional and modern scholars have generally endorsed the identification of Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great, but some early Muslim scholars saw it as a reference to a pre-Islamic monarch from Persia or south Arabia. It has also been a matter of theological controversy amongst Muslim scholars since early times. In more recent times, some Muslim scholars have suggested other alternatives, for example that Dhul-Qarnayn may be Cyrus the Great instead of Alexander the Great. There have been many different cultural depictions of Alexander the Great since antiquity. Similarities between the Qur'an and the Alexander romance were also identified in recent research based on the translation of certain medieval Syriac manuscripts.
Historical background on religious Alexander legends
There have been many different cultural depictions of Alexander the Great since antiquity, including references in the Hebrew Bible in 1 Maccabees and the Book of Daniel. Alexander the Great was an immensely popular figure in the classical and post-classical cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East. Almost immediately after his death in 323 BC a body of legend began to accumulate about his exploits and life which, over the centuries, became increasingly fantastic as well as allegorical. Collectively this tradition is called the Alexander romance and some recensions feature such vivid episodes as Alexander ascending through the air to Paradise, journeying to the bottom of the sea in a glass bubble, and journeying through the Land of Darkness in search of the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth).
The earliest Greek manuscripts of the Alexander romance, as they have survived, indicate that it was composed at Alexandria in the 3rd century. The original text was lost but was the source of some eighty different versions written in twenty-four different languages. As the Alexander romance persisted in popularity over the centuries, it was assumed by various neighboring peoples. Of particular significance was its incorporation into Jewish and later Christian legendary traditions. In the Jewish tradition Alexander was initially a figure of satire, representing the vain or covetous ruler who is ignorant of larger spiritual truths. Yet their belief in a just, all-powerful God forced Jewish interpreters of the Alexander tradition to come to terms with Alexander's undeniable temporal success. Why would a just, all-powerful God show such favor to an unrighteous ruler? This theological need, plus acculturation to Hellenism, led to a more positive Jewish interpretation of the Alexander legacy. In its most neutral form this was typified by having Alexander show deference to either the Jewish people or the symbols of their faith. In having the great conqueror thus acknowledge the essential truth of the Jews' religious, intellectual, or ethical traditions, the prestige of Alexander was harnessed to the cause of Jewish ethnocentrism. Eventually Jewish writers would almost completely co-opt Alexander, depicting him as a righteous gentile or even a believing monotheist.
The Christianized peoples of the Near East, inheritors of both the Hellenic as well as Judaic strands of the Alexander romance, further theologized Alexander until in some stories he was depicted as a saint. The Christian legends turned the ancient Greek conqueror Alexander III into Alexander "the Believing King", implying that he was a believer in monotheism. Eventually elements of the Alexander romance were combined with Biblical legends such as Gog and Magog.
During the period of history during which the Alexander romance was written, little was known about the true historical Alexander the Great as most of the history of his conquests had been preserved in the form of folklore and legends. It was not until the Renaissance (1300-1600 AD) that the true history of Alexander III was rediscovered:
Since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC there has been no age in history, whether in the West or in the East, in which his name and exploits have not been familiar. And yet not only have all contemporary records been lost but even the work based on those records though written some four and a half centuries after his death, the Anabasis of Arrian, was totally unknown to the writers of the Middle Ages and became available to Western scholarship only with the Revival of Learning [the Renaissance]. The perpetuation of Alexander's fame through so many ages and amongst so many peoples is due in the main to the innumerable recensions and transmogrifications of a work known as the Alexander Romance or Pseudo-Callisthenes.
Dating and origins of the Alexander legends
The legendary Alexander material originated as early as the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305 BC to 30 BC) and its unknown authors are sometimes referred to as the Pseudo-Callisthenes (not to be confused with Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was Alexander's official historian). The earliest surviving manuscript of the Alexander romance, called the α (alpha) recension, can be dated to the 3rd century AD and was written in Greek in Alexandria:
There have been many theories regarding the date and sources of this curious work [the Alexander romance]. According to the most recent authority, ... it was compiled by a Greco-Egyptian writing in Alexandria about A.D. 300. The sources on which the anonymous author drew were twofold. On the one hand he made use of a `romanticized history of Alexander of a highly rhetorical type depending on the Cleitarchus tradition, and with this he amalgamated a collection of imaginary letters derived from an Epistolary Romance of Alexander written in the first century B.C. He also included two long letters from Alexander to his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle describing his marvellous adventures in India and at the end of the World. These are the literary expression of a living popular tradition and as such are the most remarkable and interesting part of the work.
The Greek variants of the Alexander romance continued to evolve until, in the 4th century, the Greek legend was translated into Latin by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius (where it is called the Res gestae Alexandri Magni) and from Latin it spread to all major vernacular languages of Europe in the Middle Ages. Around the same as its translation into Latin, the Greek text was also translated into the Syriac language and from Syriac it spread to eastern cultures and languages as far afield as China and Southeast Asia. The Syriac legend was the source of an Arabic variant called the Qisas Dhul-Qarnayn (Tales of Dhul-Qarnayn) and a Persian variant called the Iskandarnamah (Book of Alexander), as well as Armenian and Ethiopic translations.
The version recorded in Syriac is of particular importance because it was current in the Middle East during the time of the Qur'an's writing and is regarded as being closely related to the literary and linguistic origins of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Qur'an. The Syriac legend, as it has survived, consists of five distinct manuscripts, including a Syriac Christian religious legend concerning Alexander and a sermon about Alexander attributed to the Syriac poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh (451-521 AD, also called Mar Jacob). The Syriac Christian legend concentrates on Alexander's journey to the end of the World, where he constructs the Gates of Alexander to enclose the evil nations of Gog and Magog, while the sermon describes his journey to the Land of Darkness to discover the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth). These legends concerning Alexander are remarkably similar to the story of Dhul-Qarnayn found in the Qur'an.
One of the five Syriac manuscripts, as it has survived, can be dated to between 629 AD and 636 AD. There is evidence in the manuscript of "ex eventu knowledge of the Khazar invasion of Armenia in A.D. 629," which suggests that the manuscript must have been burdened with additions by a redactor sometime around 629 AD. The manuscript appears to have been composed as propaganda in support of Emperor Heraclius (575-641 AD) shortly after he defeated the Persians in the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602â€"628. It is notable that this manuscript fails to mention the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 636 AD by Muhammad's (570-632 AD) successor, Caliph Umar (590-644 AD). This fact means that the manuscript must have been recorded before the "cataclysmic event"`that was the Muslim conquest of Syria and the resulting surrender of Jerusalem in November 636 AD. That the Byzantineâ€"Arab Wars would have been referenced in the manuscript, had it been written after 636 AD, is supported by the fact that in 692 AD a Syriac Christian adaption of the Alexander romance called the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was indeed written as a response to the Muslim invasions and was falsely attributed to St Methodius (?-311 AD); this Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius equated the evil nations of Gog and Magog with the Muslim invaders and shaped the eschatological imagination of Christendom for centuries.
The manuscripts also contain evidence of lost texts. For example, there is some evidence of a lost pre-Islamic Arabic version of the translation that is thought to have been an intermediary between the Syriac Christian and the Ethiopic Christian translations. There is also evidence that the Syriac translation was not directly based on the Greek recensions but was based on a lost Pahlavi (pre-Islamic Persian) intermediary.
Theological controversy
The identity of Dhul-Qarnayn has been a matter of theological controversy amongst Muslim scholars for centuries. Dhul-Qarnayn was equated with Alexander by classical Islamic scholars during a period when Christians and Jews had themselves co-opted Alexander the Great as a religious figure. However, it is clear that the historical Alexander the Great was a Greek pagan (for example, Alexander's mother Olympias is said to have been a devout member of the orgiastic snake-worshiping cult of Dionysus, and may have slept with snakes). Such historical facts about Alexander the Great became well known only after the Renaissance period (1300-1600 AD) when the Anabasis Alexandri of Arrian (AD 86- 160) was rediscovered. In light of the modern view of Alexander the Great, his identity as Dhul-Qarnayn has become a matter of great controversy for Muslims. In reaction, alternative theories about the identity of Dhul-Qarnayn have been advanced by some Muslim scholars. For example, it has been suggested that Dhul-Qarnayn could be Cyrus the Great (see Cyrus the Great in the Qur'an). The Muslim sentiment against Alexander is reflected in Islamic textbooks (e.g. "Some [Muslim Scholars] say it was Alexander the Great, who lived from 356 BCE to 323 BCE, but that is highly unlikely, given that Alexander was an idol-worshipper."), often with references to his polytheistic religious beliefs and (more recently) his personal relationships
Dhul-Qarnayn in Islamic literature
Quran
"Dhul-Qarnayn" (the "Two-Horned One" in English) is a person described in the Quran, the sacred scripture believed by Muslims to have been revealed by Allah to Muhammad. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn appears in seventeen short verses of the Quran, specifically verses 18:83-99 of Surah Al-Kahf. Dhul-Qarnayn is mentioned in only one place in the Quran, unlike the more familiar stories that are repeated throughout the text (for example, Jesus is mentioned in 93 verses in 15 different surahs of the Quran). The Quranic story describes a man called Dhul-Qarnayn (meaning "the Two-Horned"), who was already familiar to the inhabitants of the region, to whom Allah gave great power, and who traveled to the rising place and setting place of the sun, where he found the sun setting in a murky (or boiling) sea. At this place, Dhul-Qarnayn builds a wall in order to enclose the nations of Gog and Magog. It is thought that Gog and Magog will breach Dhul-Qarnayn's wall before Yaum al-QiyÄmah (the Day of Judgement) and will wreak havoc in the world (Islamic Armageddon):
Sira
The earliest mention of Dhul-Qarnayn outside the Qur'an is found in the works of the earliest Muslim historian and hagiographer, Ibn Ishaq (?-761 AD), which form the main corpus of the Sira (religious biography) literature. Ibn Ishaq's Sira reports that the eighteenth chapter of the Qur'an (which includes the story of Dhul-Qarnayn) was revealed to Muhammad by God on account of some questions posed to Muhammad by the rabbis. The verse was revealed during the Meccan period of Muhammad's life. According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's tribe, the powerful Quraysh, were greatly concerned about their tribesman who had started claiming prophethood and wished to consult the Jewish rabbis' superior knowledge of the scriptures and about the prophets of God. The two Quraysh men described their tribesman, Muhammad, to the Jewish scholars. The rabbis told the men to ask Muhammad three questions:
They (the rabbis) said, 'Ask him about three things which we will tell you to ask and if he answers them then he is a Prophet who has been sent (by Allah); if he does not, then he is saying things that are not true, in which case how you will deal with him will be up to you. Ask him about some young men in ancient times, what was their story? For theirs is a strange and wondrous tale. Ask him about a man who travelled a great deal and reached the east and the west of the earth. What was his story? And ask him about the Ruh (soul or spirit) â€"what is it? 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.'
The famous story in the Sira relates that when Muhammad was informed of the three questions from the Rabbis, he declared that he would have the answers in the morning. However, Muhammad did not give the answer in the morning. For fifteen days, Muhammad did not answer the question. Doubt in Muhammad began to grow amongst the people of Mecca. Then, after fifteen days, Muhammad received the revelation that is Sura Al-Kahf ("The Cave"), the eighteenth chapter of the Qur'an. Surah Al-Kahf mentions the "People of the Cave," a strange story about some young men in ancient times who slept in a cave for many years (which is identical to the Syriac Christian myth of the Seven Sleepers Ephesus). Surah Al-Kahf also mentions the winds (related to the word for spirit, verse 45). Finally, the surah also mentions "a man who travelled a great deal and reached the east and the west of the earth"â€"namely, Dhul-Qarnayn. Though Ibn Ishaq himself does not explicitly mention the name Alexander, he relates that a storyteller told him that Dhul-Qarnayn was a Greco-Egyptian (an accurate description of Alexander):
A man who used to purvey stories of the foreigners, which were handed down among them, told me that Dhul-Qarnayn was an Egyptian whose name was Marzuban bin Mardhaba, the Greek.
Ibn Ishaq's original work is lost, but it has been almost completely incorporated in Ibn Hisham (?-833 AD), another early Muslim historian. Ibn Hisham collected Ibn Ishaq's Sira and added his notes to it; in regards to Dhul-Qarnayn, Ibn Hisham noted:
Dhu al-Qarnain is Alexander the Greek, the king of Persia and Greece, or the king of the east and the west, for because of this he was called Dhul-Qarnayn [meaning, 'the two-horned one']...
The theme, amongst Islamic scholars, of identifying Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great appears to have originated here. Why Ibn Hisham made this identification is not entirely clear.
Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry
Ibn Ishaq recorded many pre-Islamic Arabic poems in the Sira, including a poem about Dhul-Qarnayn that he claims was composed by a pre-Islamic king of ancient Yemen named Tub'a Abu Kariba As'ad (Tub'a is commonly cited as the first of several kings of Arabia to convert to Judaism):
Dhu’l-Qarnayn before me was a Muslim
Conquered kings thronged his court,
East and west he ruled, yet he sought
Knowledge true from a learned sage.
He saw where the sun sinks from view
In a pool of mud and fetid slime
Before him Bilqis [Queen of Sheba] my father's sister
Ruled them until the hoopoe came to her.
The poem's reference to "a learned sage" from whom Dhul-Qarnayn sought knowledge from may be a reference to the story of Dhul-Qarnayn and Al-Khidir. Other pre-Islamic Arab poems about Dhul-Qarnayn are also reported in the Sira literature:
The pre-Islamic poet Al-`Asha and the contemporary of Muhammad Hassan ibn Thabit (?-674 AD) both composed verses referring to the conquest of Gog and Magog and furthest east by Dhu`l-qarnain.
One poem by Hassan ibn Thabit reads:
Ours the realm of Dhu 'l-Qarnayn the glorious
Realm like his was never won by mortal king.
Followed he the Sun to view its setting
When it sank into the somber ocean-spring;
Up he clomb to see it rise at morning,
From within its Mansions when the East it fired;
All day long the horizons led him onward,
All night through he watched the stars and never tired.
Then of iron and of liquid metal
He prepared a rampart not to be o'erpassed,
Gog and Magog there he threw in prison
Till on Judgement Day they shall awake at last
Tafsir
Alexander is mentioned in the tafsir, the exegesis or commentaries of the Qur'an that were written by prominent early Islamic scholars. Significantly, Alexander the Great is mentioned in Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a well-known Sunni tafsir of the Qur'an from the 15th century. The tafsir notes that Dhul-Qarnayn's name was Alexander and also indicates that Dhul-Qarnayn was not a prophet:
And they, the Jews, question you concerning Dhū’l-Qarnayn, whose name was Alexander; he was not a prophet. Say: ‘I shall recite, relate, to you a mention, an account, of him’, of his affair.
The commentators of the Qur'an debated on whether or not Dhul-Qarnayn was a prophet of Islam; some concluded that he was not a prophet but was a holy man or a "friend of God" since he is mentioned favorably in the Qur'an. In Islam it is ambiguous as to whether or not Dhul-Qarnayn is a full-fledged prophet.
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149-1209 AD), in Tafsir al-Kabir also comments that Dhul-Qarnayn is Alexander the Macedonian. He provides a vague justification, saying that the Dhul-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qur'an travelled to the east and the west achieving victories and so he must be Alexander:
While a survey in the history we do not find anybody other than Macedonian Alexander, therefore, the Dhul Qarnayn is the same Macedonian Alexander.
Other Islamic literature
Aristotelian Muslim philosophers, such as al-Kindi (801â€"873 AD), al-Farabi (872-950 AD), and Avicenna (980 - 1037 AD), enthusiastically embraced the concept of Dhul-Qarnayn being an ancient Greek king. They stylized Dhul-Qarnayn as a Greek philosopher king. Ibn Taymiyyah (1263â€"1328 AD) objected to the identification on the basis that Alexander was a pagan idolater, and he accused the Aristotelian Muslim philosophers such as Avicenna of making the "mistaken" identification:
...Thus, the sages of the Persian Zoroastrians are all kafir [infidels], as well as the sages of Greece such as Aristotle and those like him. They were associationists, worshipping idols and the planets. Aristotle was before 'Isa (Jesus) by three hundred years, and was a minister for Alexander son of Phillip the Macedonian, who is mentioned in the histories of Rome and Greece, as well as the histories of the Christians and the Jews. He is not, however, the same as the man named Dhu-l-Qarnain who Allah mentioned in His book, as some imagined. Some people mistakenly thought that Aristotle was a minister for dhu-l-qarnain, when they saw that (the one found in the Western histories) was named Alexander, and the names are similar, they thought that they were one and the same man. This mistaken view has been promulgated by Ibn Seena [Avicenna] and some others with him.
The Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi (1364â€"1442 AD) claimed in his book Al-Khotatt that Dhul-Qarnayn was a Yemenite king named Sa'b and wrote:
Those who claim that he [Dhul-Qarnayn] was Iranian, Roman, or that he was Alexander of Macedon, are wrong.
The mystic Ibn Arabi (d. 638â„1240) allegorically interpreted the figure of Dhul-Qarnayn as the heart which controls the left and right sides of the body.
In recent times, Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872â€"1953 AD) supported the notion of Dhul-Qarnayn being Alexander the Great and he indicated an extensive knowledge of the legends concerning Alexander:
Another suggestion was made that, Quranic Zul-qarnain was an ancient king of Persia. A king of Persia is referred to as a Ram with two horns in the Book of Daniel (viii. 3) in the Old Testament. But in the same Book, the Ram with the two horns was smitten, cast down to the ground, and stamped upon by a he-goat with one horn (8:7-8). But there is nothing in our literature to suggest that Zul-qarnain came to any such ignominious end. ... If it is argued that it was some old prehistoric Persian king who built the Iron Gates (18:96) to keep out the Gog and Magog tribes (18:94), this is no identification at all. ...
Another suggestion made is that it was some old prehistoric Himyarite king from Yemen, about whom nothing else is known. This, again, is no identification at all. ...
Personally, I have not the least doubt that Zul-Qarnain is meant to be Alexander the Great, the historic Alexander, and not the legendary Alexander...
In his commentary of the Qur'an, Abul Ala Maududi (1903â€"1979 AD) noted that historically most Muslim scholars had endorsed the identification of Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great, but recent commentators have forwarded an alternative theory that Dhul-Qarnayn is Cyrus the Great:
The identification of Zul-Qarnain has been a controversial matter from the earliest times. In general the commentators have been of the opinion that he was Alexander the Great but the characteristics of Zul-Qarnain described in the Qur'an are not applicable to him. However, now the commentators are inclined to believe that Zul-Qarnain was Cyrus, an ancient king of Iran. We are also of the opinion that probably Zul-Qarnain was Cyrus, but the historical facts, which have come to light up to this time, are not sufficient to make any categorical assertion.
Philological evidence
Philologists, studying ancient Christian legends about Alexander the Great, have come to conclude that the Qur'an's stories about Dhul-Qarnayn closely parallel certain legends about Alexander the Great found in ancient Hellenistic and Christian writings. There is some numismatic evidence, in the form of ancient coins, to identify the Arabic epithet "Dhul-Qarnayn" with Alexander the Great. There is also a long history of monotheistic religions co-opting the historical Alexander. Finally, ancient Christian Syriac and Ethiopic manuscripts of the Alexander romance from the Middle East have been found which closely resemble the story in the Qur'an. This leads to the theologically controversial conclusion that Qur'an refers to Alexander in the mention of Dhul-Qarnayn.
The two-horned one
The literal translation of the Arabic phrase "Dhul-Qarnayn," as written in the Qur'an, is "the Two-Horned." Alexander the Great was portrayed with two horns in ancient Greek depictions of Alexander:
It is well known that already in his own time Alexander was portrayed with horns according to the iconography of the Egyptian god Ammon.
The Egyptian god Ammon-Ra was depicted with ram horns. Rams were considered a symbol of virility due to their rutting behavior. The horns of Ammon may have also represented the East and West of the Earth, and one of the titles of Ammon was "the two-horned." Alexander was depicted with the horns of Ammon as a result of his conquest of ancient Egypt in 332 BC, where the priesthood received him as the son of the god Ammon, who was identified by the ancient Greeks with Zeus, the King of the Gods. The combined deity Zeus-Ammon was a distinct figure in ancient Greek mythology. According to five historians of antiquity (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), Alexander visited the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert and rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be the deity Ammon, rather than Philip. Alexander styled himself as the son of Zeus-Ammon and even demanded to be worshiped as a god:
He seems to have become convinced of the reality of his own divinity and to have required its acceptance by others ... The cities perforce complied, but often ironically: the Spartan decree read, 'Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god.'
Ancient Greek coins, such as the coins minted by Alexander's successor Lysimachus (360-281 BC), depict the ruler with the distinctive horns of Ammon on his head. Archaeologists have found a large number of different types of ancients coins depicting Alexander the Great with two horns. The 4th century BC silver tetradrachmon ("four drachma") coin, depicting a deified Alexander with two horns, replaced the 5th century BC Athenian silver tetradrachmon (which depicted the goddess Athena) as the most widely used coin in the Greek world. After Alexander's conquests, the drachma was used in many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East, including the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria. The Arabic unit of currency known as the dirham, known from pre-Islamic times up to the present day, inherited its name from the drachma. In the late 2nd century BC, silver coins depicting Alexander with ram horns were used as a principal coinage in Arabia and were issued by an Arab ruler by the name of Abi'el who ruled in the south-eastern region of the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1971, Ukrainian archeologist B.M. Mozolevskii discovered an ancient Scythian kurgan (burial mound) containing many treasures. The burial site was constructed in the 4th century BC near the city of Ordzhonikidze and is given the name Tovsta Mohyla (another name is Babyna Mogila). Amongst the artifacts excavated at this site were four silver gilded phalera (ancient Roman military medals). Two of the four medals are identical and depict the head of a bearded man with two horns, while the other two medals are also identical and depict the head of a clean-shaven man with two horns. According to a recent theory, the bearded figure with horns is actually Zeus-Ammon and the clean-shaved figure is none other than Alexander the Great.
Alexander has also been identified, since ancient times, with the horned figure in the Old Testament in the prophecy of Daniel 8 who overthrows the kings of Media and Persia. In the prophesy, Daniel has a vision of a ram with two long horns and verse 20 explains that "The ram which thou sawest having two horns is the kings of Media and Persia.":
Josephus [37â€"100 AD], in his Antiquities of the Jews xi, 8, 5 tells of a visit that Alexander is purported to have made to Jerusalem, where he met the high priest Jaddua and the assembled Jews, and was shown the book of Daniel in which it was prophesied that some one of the Greeks would overthrow the empire of Persia. Alexander believed himself to be the one indicated, and was pleased. The pertinent passage in Daniel would seem to be VIII. 3-8 which tells of the overthrow of the two-horned ram by the one-horned goat, the one horn of the goat being broken in the encounter ...The interpretation of this is given further ... "The ram which thou sawest that had the two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough he-goat is the king of Greece." This identification is accepted by the church fathers ...
The Christian Syriac version of the Alexander romance, in the sermon by Jacob of Serugh, describes Alexander as having been given two horns of iron by God. The legend describes Alexander (as a Christian king) bowing himself in prayer, saying:
O God ... I know in my mind that thou hast exalted me above all kings, and thou hast made me horns upon my head, wherewith I might thrust down the kingdoms of the world...I will magnify thy name, O Lord, forever ... And if the Messiah, who is the Son of God [Jesus], comes in my days, I and my troops will worship Him...
In Christian Alexander legends written in Ethiopic (an ancient South Semitic language) between the 14th and the 16th century, Alexander the Great is always explicitly referred to using the epithet the "Two Horned." A passage from the Ethiopic Christian legend describes the Angel of the Lord calling Alexander by this name:
Then God, may He be blessed and exalted! put it into the heart of the Angel to call Alexander 'Two-horned,' ... And Alexander said unto him, ' Thou didst call me by the name Two-horned, but my name is Alexander ... and I thought that thou hadst cursed me by calling me by this name.' The angel spake unto him, saying, 'O man, I did not curse thee by the name by which thou and the works that thou doest are known. Thou hast come unto me, and I praise thee because, from the east to the west, the whole earth hath been given unto thee ...'
References to Alexander's supposed horns are found in literature ranging many different languages, regions and centuries:
The horns of Alexander ... have had a varied symbolism. They represent him as a god, as a son of a god, as a prophet and propagandist of the Most High, as something approaching the role of a messiah, and also as the champion of Allah. They represent him as a world conqueror, who subjugated the two horns or ends of the world, the lands of the rising and of the setting sun ...
For these reasons, among others, the Qur'an's Arabic epithet "Dhul-Qarnayn," literally meaning "the two-horned one," is interpreted as a reference to Alexander the Great.
Alexander's Wall
The Qur'an's story describes Dhul-Qarnayn building a great barrier in order to enclose the nations of Gog and Magog who "do great mischief in the earth." A similar story about Alexander is found in the Alexander romance and the origins of the story can be dated as far back as 329 BC.
Early accounts of Alexander's Wall
The building of gates in the Caucasus Mountains by Alexander to repel the barbarian peoples identified with Gog and Magog has ancient provenance and the wall is known as the Gates of Alexander or the Caspian Gates. The name Caspian Gates originally applied to the narrow region at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, through which Alexander actually marched in the pursuit of Bessus in 329 BC, although he did not stop to fortify it. It was transferred to the passes through the Caucasus, on the other side of the Caspian, by the more fanciful historians of Alexander. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37â€"100 AD) mentions that:
...a nation of the Alans, whom we have previously mentioned elsewhere as being Scythians ... travelled through a passage which King Alexander [the Great] shut up with iron gates.
Josephus also records that the people of Magog, the Magogites, were synonymous with the Scythians. According to Andrew Runni Anderson, this merely indicates that the main elements of the story were already in place six centuries before the Qur'an's revelation, not that the story itself was known in the cohesive form apparent in the Qur'anic account. Similarly, St. Jerome (347â€"420 AD), in his Letter 77, mentions that,
The hordes of the Huns had poured forth all the way from Maeotis (they had their haunts between the icy Tanais and the rude Massagetae, where the gates of Alexander keep back the wild peoples behind the Caucasus).
In his Commentary on Ezekiel (38:2), Jerome identifies the nations located beyond the Caucasus mountains and near Lake Maeotis as Gog and Magog. Thus the Gates of Alexander legend was combined with the legend of Gog and Magog from the Book of Revelation. It has been suggested that the incorporation of the Gog and Magog legend into the Alexander romance was prompted by the invasion of the Huns across the Caucasus mountains in 395 AD into Armenia and Syria.
Alexander's Wall in Christian legends
Christian legends speak of the Caspian Gates (Gates of Alexander), also known as Alexander's wall, built by Alexander the Great in the Caucasus mountains. Several variations of the legend can be found. In the story, Alexander the Great built a gate of iron between two mountains, at the end of the Earth, to prevent the armies of Gog and Magog from ravaging the plains. The Christian legend was written in Syria shortly before the Qur'an's writing and closely parallels the story of Dhul-Qarnayn. The legend describes an apocryphal letter from Alexander to his mother, wherein he writes:
I petitioned the exalted Deity, and he heard my prayer. And the exalted Deity commanded the two mountains and they moved and approached each other to a distance of twelve ells, and there I made ... copper gates 12 ells broad, and 60 ells high, and smeared them over within and without with copper ... so that neither fire nor iron, nor any other means should be able to loosen the copper; ... Within these gates, I made another construction of stones ... And having done this I finished the construction by putting mixed tin and lead over the stones, and smearing .... over the whole, so that no one might be able to do anything against the gates. I called them the Caspian Gates. Twenty and two Kings did I shut up therein.
These pseudepigraphic letters from Alexander to his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle, describing his marvellous adventures at the end of the World, date back to the original Greek recension α written in the 4th century in Alexandria. The letters are "the literary expression of a living popular tradition" that had been evolving for at least three centuries before the Qur'an was written.
Medieval accounts of Alexander's Wall
Several historical figures, both Muslim and Christian, searched for Alexander's Gate and several different identifications were made with actual walls. During the Middle Ages, the Gates of Alexander story was included in travel literature such as the Travels of Marco Polo (1254â€"1324 AD) and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The Alexander romance identified the Gates of Alexander, variously, with the Pass of Dariel, the Pass of Derbent, the Great Wall of Gorgan and even the Great Wall of China. In the legend's original form, Alexander's Gates are located at the Pass of Dariel. In later versions of the Christian legends, dated to around the time of Emperor Heraclius (575-641 AD), the Gates are instead located in Derbent, a city situated on a narrow strip of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus mountains, where an ancient Sassanid fortification was mistakenly identified with the wall built by Alexander. In the Travels of Marco Polo, the wall in Derbent is identified with the Gates of Alexander. The Gates of Alexander are most commonly identified with the Caspian Gates of Derbent whose thirty north-looking towers used to stretch for forty kilometers between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, effectively blocking the passage across the Caucasus. Later historians would regard these legends as false:
The gate itself had wandered from the Caspian Gates to the pass of Dariel, from the pass of Dariel to the pass of Derbend [Derbent], as well as to the far north; nay, it had travelled even as far as remote eastern or north-eastern Asia, gathering in strength and increasing in size as it went, and actually carrying the mountains of Caspia with it. Then, as the full light of modern day come on, the Alexander Romance ceased to be regarded as history, and with it Alexander's Gate passed into the realm of fairyland.
In the Muslim world, several expeditions were undertaken to try to find and study Alexanders's wall, specifically the Caspian Gates of Derbent. An early expedition to Derbent was ordered by the Caliph Umar (586â€"644 AD) himself, during the Arab conquest of Armenia where they heard about Alexander's Wall in Derbent from the conquered Christian Armenians. Umar's expedition was recorded by the renowned exegetes of the Qur'an, Al-Tabarani (873-970 AD) and Ibn Kathir (1301â€"1373 AD), and by the Muslim geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179-1229 AD):
... Umar sent ... in 22 A.H. [643 AD] ... an expedition to Derbent [Russia] ... `Abdur Rahman bin Rabi`ah [was appointed] as the chief of his vanguard. When 'Abdur Rehman entered Armenia, the ruler Shehrbaz surrendered without fighting. Then when `Abdur Rehman wanted to advance towards Derbent, Shehrbaz [ruler of Armenia] informed him that he had already gathered full information about the wall built by Dhul-Qarnain, through a man, who could supply all the necessary details ...
Two hundred years later, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Wathiq (?-847 AD) dispatched an expedition to study the wall of Dhul-Qarnain in Derbent, Russia. The expedition was led by Sallam-ul-Tarjuman, whose observations have were recorded by Yaqut al-Hamawi and by Ibn Kathir:
...this expedition reached ... the Caspian territory. From there they arrived at Derbent and saw the wall [of Dhul-Qarnayn].
The Muslim geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi further confirmed the same view in a number of places in his book on geography; for instance under the heading "Khazar" (Caspian) he writes:
This territory adjoins the Wall of Dhul-Qarnain just behind Bab-ul-Abwab, which is also called Derbent.
The Caliph Harun al-Rashid (763 â€" 809 AD) even spent some time living in Derbent. Not all Muslim travelers and scholars, however, associated Dhul-Qarnayn's wall with the Caspian Gates of Derbent. For example, the Muslim explorer Ibn Battuta (1304â€"1369 AD) traveled to China on order of the Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq and he comments in his travel log that "Between it [the city of Zaitun in Fujian] and the rampart of Yajuj and Majuj [Gog and Magog] is sixty days' travel." The translator of the travel log notes that Ibn Battuta confused the Great Wall of China with that supposedly built by Dhul-Qarnayn.
Gog and Magog
In the Qur'an's story, it is none other than the Gog and Magog people whom Dhul-Qarnayn has enclosed behind a wall, preventing them from invading the Earth. In Islamic eschatology, before the Day of Judgement Gog and Magog will destroy this gate, allowing them to ravage the Earth, as it is described in the Qur'an:
- Until, when Gog and Magog are let loose [from their barrier], and they swiftly swarm from every mound. And the true promise [Day of Resurrection] shall draw near [of fulfillment]. Then [when mankind is resurrected from their graves], you shall see the eyes of the disbelievers fixedly stare in horror. [They will say,] ‘Woe to us! We were indeed heedless of this; nay, but we were wrongdoers.’ (Quran 21:96-97. Note that the phrases in square brackets are not in the Arabic original.)
Gog and Magog in Christian legends
In the Syriac Christian legends, Alexander the Great encloses the Gog and Magog horde behind a mighty gate between two mountains, preventing Gog and Magog from invading the Earth. In addition, it is written in the Christian legend that in the end times God will cause the Gate of Gog and Magog to be destroyed, allowing the Gog and Magog horde to ravage the Earth;
The Lord spake by the hand of the angel, [saying] ...The gate of the north shall be opened on the day of the end of the world, and on that day shall evil go forth on the wicked ... The earth shall quake and this door [gate] which thou [Alexander] hast made be opened ... and anger with fierce wrath shall rise up on mankind and the earth ... shall be laid waste ... And the nations that is within this gate shall be roused up, and also the host of Agog and the peoples of Magog [Gog and Magog] shall be gathered together. These peoples, the fiercest of all creatures.
The Christian Syriac legend describes a flat Earth orbited by the sun and surrounded by the Paropamisadae (Hindu Kush) mountains. The Paropamisadae mountains are in turn surrounded by a narrow tract of land which is followed by a treacherous Ocean sea called Okeyanos. It is within this tract of land between the Paropamisadae mountains and Okeyanos that Alexander encloses Gog and Magog, so that they could not cross the mountains and invade the Earth. The legend describes "the old wise men" explaining this geography and cosmology of the Earth to Alexander, and then Alexander setting out to enclose Gog and Magog behind a mighty gate between a narrow passage at the end of the flat Earth:
The old men say, "Look, my lord the king, and see a wonder, this mountain which God has set as a great boundary." King Alexander the son of Philip said, "How far is the extent of this mountain?" The old men say, "Beyond India it extends in its appearance." The king said, "How far does this side come?" The old men say, "Unto all the end of the earth." And wonder seized the great king at the council of the old men ... And he had it in his mind to make there a great gate. His mind was full of spiritual thoughts, while taking advice from the old men, the dwellers in the land. He looked at the mountain which encircled the whole world ... The king said, "Where have the hosts [of Gog and Magog] come forth to plunder the land and all the world from of old?" They show him a place in the middle of the mountains, a narrow pass which had been constructed by God ...
Flat Earth beliefs in the Early Christian Church varied and the Fathers of the Church shared different approaches. Those of them who were more close to Aristotle and Plato's visions, like Origen, shared peacefully the belief in a spherical Earth. A second tradition, including St Basil and St Augustine, accepted the idea of the round Earth and the radial gravity, but in a critical way. In particular they pointed out a number of doubts about the antipodes and the physical reasons of the radial gravity. However, a flat Earth approach was more or less shared by all the Fathers coming from the Syriac area, who were more inclined to follow the letter of the Old Testament. Diodore of Tarsus (?-390 AD), Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century), and Chrysostom (347â€"407 AD) belonged to this flat Earth tradition.
Medieval accounts of Gog and Magog
In the Christian Alexander romance literature, Gog and Magog were sometimes associated with the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived near the Caspian Sea. In his 9th century work Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, the Benedictine monk Christian of Stavelot refers to the Khazars as Hunnic descendants of Gog and Magog, and says they are "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism"; the Khazars were a Central Asian people with a long association with Judaism. A Georgian tradition, echoed in a chronicle, also identifies the Khazars with Gog and Magog, stating they are "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood."
Early Muslim scholars writing about Dhul-Qarnayn also associated Gog and Magog with the Khazars. Ibn Kathir (1301â€"1373 AD), the famous commentator of the Qur'an, identified Gog and Magog with the Khazars who lived between the Black and Caspian Sea in his work Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah (The Beginning and the End). The Muslim explorer Ahmad ibn Fadlan, in his travelogue regarding his diplomatic mission in 921 AD to Volga Bulgars (a vassal of the Khazarian Empire), noted the beliefs about Gog and Magog being the ancestors of the Khazars.
Thus Muslim scholars associated the Khazars with Dhul-Qarnayn just as the Christian legends associated the Khazars with Alexander the Great.
The rising place of the Sun
A peculiar aspect of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn, in the Qur'an, is that it describes Dhul-Qarnayn travelling to "the rising place of the Sun" and the "setting place of the Sun," where he saw the Sun sets into a murky (or boiling) spring of water (or mud). Dhul-Qarnayn also finds a people living by the "rising place of the Sun," and finds that these people somehow have "no shelter."
In his commentary of the Qur'an, Ibn Kathir (1301â€"1373 AD) explains that verse 18:89 is referring to the furthest point that could be travelled west:
(Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun,) means, he followed a route until he reached the furthest point that could be reached in the direction of the sun's setting, which is the west of the earth. As for the idea of his reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, this is something impossible, and the tales told by storytellers that he traveled so far to the west that the sun set behind him are not true at all. Most of these stories come from the myths of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] and the fabrications and lies of their heretics.
In this commentary Ibn Kathir differentiates between the end of the (presumably flat) Earth and the supposed "place in the sky" where the sun sets (the "resting place" of the sun. Ibn Kathir contends that Dhul-Qarnayn did reach the farthest place that could be travelled west but not the "resting place" of the sun and he goes on to mention that the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell myths about Dhul-Qarnayn travelling so far beyond the end of the Earth that the sun was "behind him." This shows that Ibn Kathir was aware of the Christian legends and it suggests that Ibn Kathir considered Christian myths about Alexander to be referring to the same figure as the Dhul-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qu'an.
A similar theme is elaborated upon in several places in the Islamic hadith literature, in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim:
It is narrated ... that the Messenger of Allah one day said: Do you know where the sun goes? They replied: Allah and His Apostle know best. He (the Holy Prophet) observed: Verily it (the sun) glides till it reaches its resting place under the Throne [of Allah]. Then it falls prostrate and remains there until it is asked: Rise up and go to the place whence you came, and it goes back and continues emerging out from its rising place...
The setting place of the sun is also commented on by Al-Tabari (838-923 AD) and Al-Qurtubi (1214 - 1273 AD) and, like Ibn Kathir, they showed some reservations towards the literal idea of the sun setting in a muddy spring but held to the basic theme of Dhul-Qarnayn reaching the ends of the Earth. The later Islamic scholar Imam al-Suyuti (1445-1505 AD) also maintained that the Earth is flat.
That the Earth must be spherical was known since at least the time of Pythagoras (570-495 BC), but this knowledge did not reach ancient folklore such as the Alexander romance where Alexander travels to the ends of a flat Earth. It is notable that, unlike the Babylonians, Greeks, and Indians, the pre-Islamic Arabs had no scientific astronomy. Their knowledge of astronomy was limited to measuring time based on empirical observations of the "rising and setting" of the sun, moon, and particular stars. This area of astronomical study was known as anwa and continued to be developed after Islamization by the Arabs. Astronomy in medieval Islam began in the 8th century and the first major Muslim work of astronomy was Zij al-Sindh written in 830 by al-Khwarizmi. The work is significant as it introduced the Ptolemaic system into Islamic sciences (the Ptolemaic system was ultimately replaced by the Copernican system during the Scientific Revolution in Europe).
The rising place of the Sun in the Alexander legends
