Dhu al-Qarnayn

Dhu al-Qarnayn, (Arabic: ذُو ٱلْقَرْنَيْن, romanized: Dhū l-Qarnayn, IPA: [ðu‿l.qarˈnajn]; lit. "The Owner of Two-Horns") is a leader who appears in the Qur'an, Surah al-Kahf (18), Ayahs 83–101, as one who travels to the east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog (Arabic: يَأْجُوجُ وَمَأْجُوجُ, romanized: Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj). Elsewhere, the Qur'an tells how the end of the world will be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the barrier. Other apocalyptic writings predict that their destruction by God in a single night will usher in the Day of Resurrection (Arabic: یوم القيامة, romanized: Yawm al-Qiyāmah).
Dhu al-Qarnayn has most popularly been identified by Western and traditional Muslim scholars as Alexander the Great. Historically, some tradition has parted from this identification in favor of others, like pre-Islamic Arabian kings such as the (mythical) Sa'b Dhu Marathid of Himyar or the historical figure al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'man of the Lakhmid kingdom (d. 554). Cyrus the Great has also gained popularity among modern Muslim commentators.
The verses of the chapter reproduced below show Dhu al-Qarnayn traveling first to the Western limit of travel 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 story of Dhu al-Qarnayn is related in chapter 18 of the Qur'an, al-Kahf, revealed to Muhammad when his tribe, Al-Quraysh, sent two men to discover whether the Jews, with their superior knowledge of the scriptures, could advise them on whether Muhammad was truly a prophet of God. The rabbis told the Quraysh to ask Muhammad about three things, one of them "about a man who travelled and reached the east and the west of the earth, ask what his story was. 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." (Qur'an 18:83-98).
A well known narration from a Companion of Muhammad, Ali denies that the term "Qarnayn" literally meant horns. He instead narrates that the term "Dhul Qarnayn" was not a literal term but instead referred to injuries that took place on the two sides of the head of the ruler.
Cyril Glasse writes that the reference to "He of the two horns" also has a symbolical interpretation: “He of the two Ages”, which reflects the eschatological shadow that Alexander casts from his time, which preceded Islam by many centuries, until the end of the world. The Arabian word qarn means both "horn" and “period” or “century”. Classical commentary from Al-Qurtubi has reported the narration from Al-Suhayli commentaries that he favored the identification that Dhu al-Qarnayn were actually two different persons, where one lived during the time of Abraham, while the other has lived during the time of Jesus.
Regarding the Gog and Magog, a minority of Muslim commentators argue that 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. Modern Islamic apocalyptic writers put forward various explanations for the absence of the wall from the modern world, such as "not everything in existence can be seen", similar to human intelligence and angels, or that God has concealed the Gog and Magog from human eyes.
According to some historians, the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great current in the Middle East, namely the Syriac Alexander Legend. The first century Josephus repeats a legend whereby Alexander builds an iron wall at a mountain pass (potentially at the Caucasus Mountains) to prevent an incursion by a barbarian group known as the Scythians, whom elsewhere he identified as Magog. The legend went through much further elaboration in subsequent centuries before eventually finding its way into the Quran through a Syrian version. However, some have questioned whether the Syriac Legend influenced the Quran on the basis of dating inconsistencies and missing key motifs, although others have in turn rebutted these arguments.
While the Syriac Alexander Legend references the horns of Alexander, it consistently refers to the hero by his Greek name, not using a variant epithet. The use of the Islamic epithet Dhu al-Qarnayn "Two-Horned", first occurred in the Quran, though it may be derived from traditions describing Alexander as being horned in Syriac texts. 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 Muhammad al-Idrisi drew a map for Roger II of Sicily showing the "Land of Gog and Magog" in Mongolia), or of various Sasanian walls built in the Caspian Sea region 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, while the Quran refers to this as an 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.
Some exegetes believed that Dhu al-Qarnayn lived near the time of Abraham following accounts by al-Azraqi and Ibn Abi Hatim. To avoid this chronological discrepancy, several medieval exegetes and historians did not identify Dhu al-Qarnayn with Alexander. Al-Tabari inferred that there were two Dhu al-Qarnayn's: the earlier one, called Dhu al-Qarnayn al-Akbar, who lived in the time of Abraham, and the later one, who was Alexander. In one account concerning Abraham building a well at Beersheba, Dhu al-Qarnayn seems to have been placed in the role of Abimelech as described in Gen 21:22–34.
Other notable Muslim commentators, including ibn Kathir, ibn Taymiyyah, and Naser Makarem Shirazi, have used theological arguments to reject the Alexander identification: Alexander lived only a short time whereas Dhu al-Qarnayn (according to some traditions) lived for 700 years as a sign of God's blessing, though this is not mentioned in the Quran, and Dhu al-Qarnayn worshipped only one God, while Alexander was a polytheist.
The various campaigns of Dhu al-Qarnayn mentioned in Q:18:83-101 have also been attributed to the South Arabian Himyarite King Ṣaʿb Dhu-Marāthid (also known as al-Rāʾid). Ibn Hisham gives an extensive forty-five page account of King Ṣaʿb in his work The Book of Crowns on the Kings of Himyar, relying on the Yemeni author Wahb ibn Munabbih. In this account, King Ṣaʿb was a conqueror who was given the epithet Dhu al-Qarnayn after meeting a figure named Musa al Khidr in Jerusalem. He then travels to the ends of the earth, conquering or converting people until being led by al Khidr through the Land of Darkness. Other elements include a journey to a valley of diamonds, a castle with glass walls, and a campaign as far as the Andalusia region (classical era Spain). However, according to Al-Qurtubi, the original opinion of Wahb ibn Munabbih identified the legendary conqueror as a Roman, contradicting Ibn Hisham's commentary. Al-Tabari also reports that Wahb believed Dhu al-Qarnayn was a man from Byzantium named Iskandar.
Academic scholars consider the Sa'b story to be an appropriation of the Syriac Alexander Legend. While Ibn Hisham's book made use of Wahb's earlier material, Tilman Nagel doubts that Wahb's text included this particular story given Ibn Hisham's sceptical attitude to the claims of Southern Arabians, and notes that al-Tabari relied on Wahb's Alexander story yet included no Himyarite (South Arabian) elements. Following a detailed analysis, Nagel instead defines the milieu in which this version emerged as that of South Arabians in early eighth-century Egypt, and observes that Southern Arabs were one of two factions who vied for power in the Umayyad empire.
Richard Stoneman notes that Wahb was known for the composition of qisas, in which folklore is served up as history. According to Stoneman, the South Arabian legend was composed within the context of the division between the South Arabs and North Arabs that began with the Battle of Marj Rahit in 684 AD and consolidated over two centuries. He too dates the story to the 8th century CE, intended to give a parallel for, and to justify, the Islamic conquests in the west, representing a glorification of the South Arabian traditions and their conquests in Egypt. Anna Akasoy agrees with Alfred Beeston that Sa'b's entire existence is fictional and a product of Yemeni chauvinism, noting that later Yemeni Kings whose existence is confirmed were assigned similar exploits borrowed from legends of Alexander. According to Wheeler, it is possible that some elements of these accounts that were originally associated with Ṣaʿb have been incorporated into stories which identify Dhu al-Qarnayn with Alexander.
In modern times, some Muslim scholars have argued in favour of Dhu al-Qarnayn being actually Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire and conqueror of Persia and Babylon. Proponents of this view cite Daniel's vision in the Old Testament where he saw a two-horned ram that represents "the kings of Media and Persia" (Daniel 8:20). Brannon Wheeler argues that this identification is unlikely on the basis of a lack of Arab histories viewing him as a conqueror in the sense described in the Dhu al-Qarnayn narrative, and the lack of any early commentaries identifying Dhu al-Qarnayn as Cyrus.
Archeological evidence cited includes the Cyrus Cylinder, which portrays Cyrus as a worshipper of the Babylonian god Marduk, who ordered him to rule the world and establish justice in Babylon. The cylinder states that idols that Nabonidus had brought to Babylon from various other Babylonian cities were reinstalled by Cyrus in their former sanctuaries and ruined temples reconstructed. Supported with other texts and inscriptions, Cyrus appears to have initiated a general policy of permitting religious freedom throughout his domains.
A famous relief on a palace doorway pillar in Pasagardae depicts a winged figure wearing a Hemhem crown (a type of ancient Egyptian crown mounted on a pair of long spiral ram's horns). Some scholars take this to be a depiction of Cyrus due to an inscription that was once located above it, though most see it as a tutelary genie, or protective figure and note that the same inscription was also written on other palaces in the complex.
This theory was proposed in 1855 by the German philologist G. M. Redslob, but it did not gain followers in the west. Among Muslim commentators, it was first promoted by Sayyed Ahmad Khan (d. 1889), then by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and generated wider acceptance over the years.
Other persons who either were identified with the Quranic figure or given the title Dhu al-Qarnayn:
Dhu al-Qarnayn, the traveller, proved a popular subject for later writers. In Al-Andalus, for instance, an Arabic translation of the Syriac Alexander Legend appeared, entitled Qissat Dhulqarnayn. This work explores Dhu al-Qarnayn's life – his upbringing, journeys, and eventual death. The text identifies Dhu al-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great and portrays him as the first person to complete the Hajj pilgrimage.
Another Hispano-Arabic legend featuring Dhu al-Qarnayn, representing Alexander, is the Hadith Dhulqarnayn (or the Leyenda de Alejandro). In one of the many Arabic and Persian versions depicting Alexander's encounter with Indian sages, the Persian Sunni Sufi theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111) describes a scene where Dhu al-Qarnayn meets a people who own nothing but dig graves outside their homes. Their king explains that death is life's only certainty, a reason for their practices. Ghazali's interpretation found its way into the One Thousand and One Nights.
The esteemed medieval Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273) wrote about Dhu al-Qarnayn's eastward travels. Here, the hero climbs Mount Qaf, the emerald 'mother' of all mountains encircling the Earth, its veins spreading below every land. Upon Dhu al-Qarnayn's request, the mountain reveals how earthquakes occur: when God wills it, one of its veins pulsates, triggering a tremor. Atop this grand mountain, Dhu al-Qarnayn encounters Israfil (archangel Raphael), prepared to sound the trumpet on Judgement Day.
The Malay epic Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain links several Southeast Asian royal lines to Iskandar Zulkarnain; this includes the Minangkabau royalty of Central Sumatra and the Cholan emperor Rajendra I in the Malay Annals.