page_title: List of legends in the Quran
section_title: Alexander the Great legends
hierarchical_section_title: List of legends in the Quran / Christian legends / Alexander the Great legends
caption_attribution_description: English: Silver tetradrachm issued in the name of Alexander III of Macedonia (Alexander the Great). Arados, 242/241 BC (posthumous issue). British Museum, London, UK.Ελληνικά: Αργυρό τετράδραχμο που κόπηκε στο όνομα του Αλέξανδρου Γ' της Μακεδονίας. Άραδος 242/241 π.Χ. (μεταγενέστερη έκδοση). Βρετανικό Μουσείο, Λονδίνο
context_page_description: A number of legends, parables or pieces of folklore appear in the Quran, often with similar motifs to Jewish and Christian traditions which may pre-date those in the Quran. One folklorist, Alan Dundes, has noted three "folktales" in the Quran that fit the pattern of those included in the Aarne–Thompson classification systems of folklore narratives. Peter G. Bietenholz has also noted legends in the Quran that share themes found in Jewish and Christian legends.
context_section_description: Quran also employs popular legends about Alexander the Great called Dhu al-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns") in the Quran.
  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). According to Bietenholz, 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.
caption: Silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great shown wearing the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon.
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