Dhu al-Qarnayn

Dhu al-Qarnayn (ذُو ٱلْقَرْنَيْن In Arabic,ذو القرنين on Wiktionary also spelled in English as Dhu'l-Qarnayn, Dhulqarnayn, Dhul-Qarnayn, Zulqarnayn "Dhu'l-Qarnayn" on Wiktionary), which literally means "The Two-Horned" in Arabic, is a character which appears in the Quran 18:83–101 as as one who travels to east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog. Based on the similarities between his story and some legends around it is commonly believed that Dhu al-Qarnayn was Alexander the Great. However, this identification is problematic for many Muslims because we know that Alexander the Great was a polytheist.That's why many modern Muslim apologists make alternative hypotheses about his identity .Despite this, there is overwhelming historical evidence that the story is inspired from those legends. The story of Dhu al-Qarnayn as described in the Quran has become very problematic for modern Muslim apologists because it contains some elements which contradict some basic scientific knowledge about the universe. Thus, it is probably one of the most controvertial stories found in the Quran, and scholars have proposed different interpretations, none of which are universally agreed upon and none of them is without flaws or problems.
==The story==
NOTE: In some translations of the Qur'an, it is written :"which appeared to him to be setting in a muddy spring" instead of "which was setting in a muddy spring". This is actually a mistranslations (likely motivated by the fact that the verses seem wrong when interpreted litterally) and the word "appear" is not mentionned in the original Arabic Qur'an. This will be further discussed in more details in the following sections.
==The sun setting in a muddy spring==
The above verses (in particular verse number 86) explicitly says that the sun sets into a muddy spring. This is wrong for obvious reasons. If it were true the sun would revolve around the Earth. It would also need to be considerably smaller than the Earth in order to sink into the muddy spring each evening. This is impossible on a spherical earth, since there is no specific place where the sun goes "down".
Due to all of these problems, Muslim apologists have tried to find alternative interpretations in order to avoid the apparent contradiction between these verses and reality. Unfortunately most of these interpretations are problematic. "Does the Quran really say the Sun sets in a muddy spring?"
The main argument made by apologists is to interprete these verses not as meaning that the sun literally sets in a muddy spring, but simply as referring to what Dhu al-Qarnayn saw. According to this argument, Dhu al-Qarnayn was just saw what looked like the sun setting over the horizon, which happened to be close to a muddy spring.
===The first problem: Linguistic incoherence of the ineterpretation===
The first problem with this argument is that the Quran iself is supposed to be a clear book. The Quran itself claims it is clear (verses: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ), that the verses are explained in detail (; ), that there is no doubt about the Quran (). Any verse being interpreted metaphorically, including this one, would suggest that the Quran is not clear, and that is against the claims of the Quran itself.
Why would the Quran even include the mistaken view of Dhu al-Qarnayn? Muslim apologists would probably answer "Allah knows best". Let's assume that, for some mysterious reason, the Quran is describing the illusion of Dhu al-Qarnayn seeing the sun as if it were setting in a muddy spring, this raises many other questions. Why didn't the Quran express it in a less ambiguous way? The Quran says, for example, that Jesus was never crucified but it appeared that way to people (). Here the Quran is very clear and there is no room for ambiguity or error in the interpretation (in Arabic, it is written "ولكن شبه لهم" which translates "it was made to appear to them. If the Quran also intended to say that Dhu al-Qarnayn mistakenly saw the sun as if it were setting in a muddy spring, why didn't it express it more clearly? In the verse where Dhu al-Qarnayn found the sun setting in a muddy spring, the word used is "وجد" meaning "he found". Some translations of the Quran translate this word as "as if he found" or something similar", but this is a mistranslation. This same word is used 35 times in the Quran (; ; ; ; ; , ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ) and in none of those instances is this word used to mean "as if he found", all of them simply mean "he found". It seems highly unlikely that the Quran would use the same meaning for the same word in all instances except once where for some reason it decided to use it with another meaning. This is even more unlikely due to the fact that the word "وجد" appears twice in the same verse (see the translation in the previous section). In the second instance it referes to Dhu al-Qarnayn finding people close to the setting place of the sun. It wouldn't make sense if the Quran says that Dhu al-Qarnayn was as if he were seeing people (this is even more obvious when the Quran says that Dhu al-Qarnayn judged the people), and the Quran would be unclear and incoherent if it used the same word in the same verse twice but each time with a different meaning. (Also it wouldn't make sense that he saw real people close to a place that he only mistakenly saw, but which is not real). So the only coherent interpretation is that Dhu al-Qarnayn did see the sun really setting in a muddy spring. Muslim apologists tend to ignore all of these incoherences in their interpretations.
Let's analyze the whole story. In verse 18:83, it is said that Muhammad was told by the people to tell the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn to prove his prophethood. The next two verses speak about the power of Dhu al-Qarnayn and the beginning of his journey. The next verse is about Dhu al-Qarnayn seeing the sun setting in a muddy spring and judging people near it, which we already talked about. The next two are also about the judgment of the people. Let's stop there and see the context: Dhu al-Qarnayn followed a course, until he saw the west where the sun was setting in a muddy spring. If he would eventually just see the sun setting above the horizon, but not in reality, then what was the purpose behind him making this whole journey? Couldn't he just sit there and wait for the sunset if he was only seeing it setting below the horizon? The Arabic word used for reaching here is "بلغ". Some Muslim apologists say that this word means reaching a moment in time, the time when the sun sets (not in the literal sense), not a place. While it is true that it has two meaning: a spatial and a temporal one, the context here suggests it is used in the spatial sense, because he followed a physical road, not waited a moment in time. This will become more obvious with the following verses. The following two verses say Dhu al-Qarnayn followed a different course, the following verse tells us he reached the rising place of the sun where he found people with no protection. The next verse says Dhu al-Qarnayn followed a different course (again!). In the following verse, Dhu al-Qarnayn reached a pass between two mountains and found people whose language he couldn't understand. Now we can understand the context of the story. This last verse uses once again the word "بلغ" meaning "he reached". In the last verse we mentioned the word "بلغ" is unambiguously used in the spatial sense (it doesn't make sense to reach the "time of two mountains"). For the whole story to be coherent, it must be that "بلغ" is used for reaching a place in the whole story. Therefore we can reject the interpretation according to which the word "بلغ" is used for reaching a time, since the context makes it clear that it is used for reaching places. Therefore Dhu al-Qarnayn definitively reached the litteral place where the sun sets. The word "وجد", meaning "he found", is also used in this last verse as referring to the people between the two mountains, and it is used here in the meaning "he found", not "as if he found", since it wouldn't make sense otherwise.
===The second problem:The size of springs===
Now let's move on to the second problem. The verse speaks about the sun setting in a spring of blackened muddy water. The Arabic word for spring is "عين" (not to be confused with the homophonous Arabic word which means "eye", an entirely different meaning). Apologists claim Dhu al-Qarnayn would have seen a setting from his perspective over the horizon, similar to how you would see the sunset over the sea, like in this picture.
The Arabic words for bodies of water, ordered by decreasing size, are as follow:
#"محيط" meaning "ocean"
#"بحر" meaning "sea"
#"بحيرة" meaning "lake"
#"نهر" meaning "river"
#"عين" meaning "spring"
Oceans and lakes are not mentionned in the Quran, because at the time of the revelation any large body of water would have been called sea. The spring is clearly the smallest one of them, and the Quran clearly uses it as the location of the physical setting place of the sun. Is there a spring big enough so that it stretches all the way to the horizon? The biggest spring in the world is called (although it is a spring, not a lake), also called Waimangu Cauldron, located in New Zealand. Its width is only 200 meters, which is not big enough to stretch all the way to the horizon, as seen in this picture.
New Zealand is not considered far away to the west, and it wasn't even inhabited by humans at the time of the revelation. Moreover this spring only appeared in 1886 due to a volcanic eruption. All other springs all around the world are smaller, and also can't stretch all the way to the horizon. There is therefore no way for the sun to appear to set in a muddy spring below the horizon because springs are not big enough to stretch all the way to the horizon.
===The third problem:Hadiths by Muhammad===
The following hadith confirms the fact that the sun sets in a muddy spring."Sunan Abi Dawud 4002"
This hadith is concidered authentic (sahih) by Muslim scholars. 
There is an equally authentic hadith which is arguably even worse, since it tells us that the sun worships every night under the throne of Allah."Sahih al-Bukhari 4803"
All of these are impossible, given that the sun is always in the sky at some stage on a physical Earth. This would only work if we were living on a flat Earth.
All of these confirm that the intended meaning is that the sun (literally) sets in a muddy spring.
===The fourth problem: Early interpretations by early Islamic scholars===
Early Islamic scholars interpreted these verses (and more generally, the whole Quran) literally, not metaphorically. Early Islamic scholars had a much better understanding of Classical Arabic than modern scholars. Many of them (although not all of them) lived at the time of the prophet, and therefore had the opportunity to ask him about a specific verse. Those who didn't have that opportunity also based their interpretations on the sayings of the prophet and his companions. Moreover, their interpretations were mostly not influenced by any other thing, such us scientific knowledge, so they interpreted the Quran and the hadith as they were written. It is therefore reasonable to say that he early interpretations more accurately represent the original and intended meaning of the Quran than modern scholars.
One of the most important Islamic scholars in the past was a scholar known as He wrote two major works: a very thorough commentary of the Quran called Qurʾān Commentary, as well as a comprehensive creationist account of the history of the universe told through Islamic narrations called History of Prophets and Kings. Both works have undeniably formed the basis for the vast majority of Islamic history in Quranic interpretation. His book History of Prophets and Kings, pages 234-235 interprets the verses literally and thus confirms the literal interpretation:"Tabari_Volume_01.pdf (English translation)"
Let's see what early tafsirs (commentaries or exegeries about the Quran) said about this verse."altafsir.com" All early tafsirs interpreted most of the Quran, including this verse, literally. The tafsir of Tabari (310 Hijri, equivalent to 922 CE) contains narrations of many of the companions of the prophet, all of them interpreted the verse literally, and Tabari didn't even mention the possibility of the verse being metaphorical."تفسير جامع البيان في تفسير القرآن/ الطبري (ت 310 هـ) مصنف و مدقق" Tafsir al-Kabir Imam al-Tabrani (360 Hijri, equivalent to 970 CE) is the first tafsir to mention the possibility of Dhu al-Qarnayn just seeing the sun setting at the horizon."تفسير التفسير الكبير / للإمام الطبراني (ت 360 هـ) مصنف و مدقق" This tafsir, however, is controversial and most scholars consider it as a fraud actually written by other people between 500 and 600 years after Muhammad's death. It was written by other people trying to give it legimity by attributing it to "صدر حديثاً (التفسير الكبير) للطبراني بتحقيق هشام البدراني" Tafsir al-Kashf wa al-Bayan (427 Hijri, equivalent to 1035 CE) tells us that the muddy spring propels the sun through the underworld to reach thee place of sunrise. This tafsir also mentions a poem by an ancient Yemeni King called who lived at least 700 years before Muhammad."تفسير الكشف والبيان / الثعلبي (ت 427 هـ) مصنف و مدقق" This poem might be where the idea of the sun setting in a muddy spring in the Quran came from. Tafsir al-Mawirdi (450 Hijri, equivalent to 1058 CE) is the first non-controversial tafsir to mention the possibility of this verse just refering to Dhu al-Qarnayn's perspective."تفسير النكت والعيون/ الماوردي (ت 450 هـ) مصنف و مدقق" It took 440 years after the death of Muhammad for Muslims to start to realize the possibility that Dhu al-Qarnayn just saw the sun what looked like setting below the horizon! Tafsir al-Tibyan-al-Tusi (460 Hijri, equivalent to 1067 CE) mentions which Muslims figured out that the sun was too big to literally set in a muddy spring, but it also mentioned that there were still disputes."تفسير التبيان الجامع لعلوم القرآن/ الطوسي (ت 460 هـ) مصنف و مدقق" So it took more than 450 years after Muhammad's death for Muslims to realize that the sun can't physically set in a muddy spring.
===Conclusion===
All the arguments provided above are clearly evidence that the intended meaning behind these verses is that the sun literally and physically sets in a muddy spring. Interpreting the verses as saying that it was from Dhu al-Qarnayn's perspective creates linguistic inconsistencies and is unrealistic. 
The hadiths also confirm the literal interpretation. It's clear that Muslims for 440 years believed that the sun does indeed set in a muddy spring, before realizing that this was impossible due to growing scientific evidences, and they were unwilling to reject Islam so they changed their interpretation, which creates new problems as we discussed above. A Muslim therefore has two choices: either to reject all the scientific evidences and accepting the claims of the Quran, or to start questioning Islam.
Similar stories of the sun rising and setting somewhere on Earth are found in mythologies that predate Islam. In Egyption mythology, for example, the sun rises somewhere on Earth, travels across the sky before setting somewhere on Earth then travelling through the underworld to its rising place. It seems that Islam borrowed from these mythologies, the only difference is that in these mythologies the sun is a god, while in Islam it is just an object guided by Allah.
==Gog and Magog==
The story of Gog and Magog (called يَأْجُوجُ وَمَأْجُوجُ in Arabic) is also mentioned in the Bible, but for now we will only focus on the Islamic narrative.
We will focus on the second part of the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn (18:93-101)."The lost tribes of Gog & Magog in Islam" In these verses, Dhu al-Qanayn traveled a third course, until he reached the pass between two mountains where he found people who told about Gog and Magog spreading corruption in the land. Then Dhu al-Qarnayn made a metal barrier between the two mountains to stop Gog and Magog. Another verse of the Quran () tells us that one day Gog and Magog will break free from the barrier and cause terror on the Earth. According to the Islamic tradition, there are 10 signs for what will happen before the day of judgment,"Sahih Muslim 2901a" one of them being Gog and Magog making their way through the barrier and causing chaos on Earth.
Imagine we have a large group of people who belong to troublesome tribes. Dhu al-Qarnayn comes and builds a huge wall between two mountains. These people are now standing behind the big wall, can't they just walk around the side of one of the mountains? Since we live on a spherical Earth, one wall between two mountains is never sufficient for incarceration. This would make more sence if the mountains were near the edge of a flat Earth.
We know that this wall, if it exists, would be huge because of the number of people behind it. The Quranic verse 21:96 tells us that they swiftly swarm from every hill. Neither the tribe nor the wall have been found. It is ridiculous to say that there is a lost tribe of a huge number of people trapped behind a wall between two mountains we have never found. The Bible also tells us a similar story in the Book of Revelation.
This hadith,"Sahih al-Bukhari 6530" considered authentic, says that out of every 1,000 people, 999 will go to hell, and 999 of every 1,000 who go to hell will be from Gog and Magog. Let's assume the Day of Judgment is about to happen. It is estimated that around 108 billion humans have lived on Earth (including those who are no longer alive). Based on the above hadith and the above statistics, we can estimate that there are more than 54 trillion people belonging to that tribe! Given all of this, it seems absurd to say that there is a tribe of more than 54 trillion people we can't find that are trapped behind a metal wall between two mountains we also can't find. Assuming we put each human in one square meter (excluding Gog and Magog), we can fit the whole human population into New York City. If we were to do the same thing for Gog and Magog, we would need an area equivalent to India and Argentina combined. And this is if we assume that each one has no room to move. And it is claimed that somehow we didn't find all of them. 
People have looked across every place on the surface of the planet, and no one has ever found the metal wall between two mountains behind which there are 54 trillion people. Some have claimed that the wall is the The Quran, however, tells us this wall was made of iron and copper, which is not the case for the Great Wall of China. Many other places have been proposed, but all of these proposals are problematic. acknowledged all these problems, but despite all the evidence; he didn't want to dismiss the story but rather said "God knows best" (Allahu A'lam)."Tafseer Surah Al-Kahf (Part 18): Yajuj, Majuj & 10 Signs Day of Judgment"
==Dhu al-Qarnayn and Alexander Romance==
The Qur'an doesn't tell us much about Dhu al-Qarnayn. Some Muslim apologists claim that he is However, many Islamic scholars object to this by saying that historical evidences show that Alexander was a polytheist, while the Quran clearly says Dhu al-Qarnayn is a believer in God. Others argue that he is the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, some have proposed other historical persons. And many just say "Allahu a'lam" ("God knows best" in Arabic). But when we examine the Quran from a historical perspective, it seems that the Quran heavily borrowed from legends about Alexander the Great, especially from "The Quran & the Alexander Romance" These stories are pure legend and there is no historical evidence to confirm them.
===Some historical background===
Alexander the Great (the historical, not the legendary one) was a Macedonian leader who managed to conquer much of the known world at the time. His empire eventually stretching from Egypt to Macedonia in the west, to part of India in the east. Alexander was born in 356 BCE into a life of privilege and even had Aristotle as a tutor. He revered Cyrus the Great and embraced many aspects of Persian life. He claimed divinity and ordered people to worship him in a Persian fashion called Before setting out to conquer Asia, Alexander brought along the well-known historian of his era, He wanted Callisthenes to record his exploits and the march of the Macedonian army east. But Alexander's arrogance was not well received by the Macedonians of the time. Many Macedonians came to despise much of Alexander's behavior, Callisthenes was one of them. Callisthenes was imprisoned until his death in 327 BCE. His historical works were destroyed. Alexander died 4 years later at the age of 32 in Babylon. 
Having won every single battle during his life, creating the largest empire at the time, Alexander became a legend. Stories about him were created to portray him as an even more powerful man after his death. One of them is the well-known legend of Historians have reached the consensus that it was just a fable falsely attributed to Callisthenes. They began circulating orally soon after Alexander's death. Hundreds of years later, these fables were written down in Greece and Egypt around 200 BCE. Given the geography and the very strong trade links in the region, and that they were written in Egypt and Greece by 200 BCE, then the oral tradition was likely very common in Arabia at the time, long before Islam. It would therefore be likely that some of these myths made their way into the Quran.
===Evidences for the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn being based on myths around Alexander the Great===
We have already discussed how the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn may have been taken from a pre-Islamic poem by Tubba as evidenced in early Islamic sources. So it's clear that myths around the man with two horns were already common in Arabia before Islam. "Dhu al-Qarnayn" litterally means "two horned" in Arabic. Many archeological evidences show that Alexander was often represented with two horns. The two-horned man makes several appearances in many legends about Alexander the Great. It appears to have originated from the Egyptian version which, like other versions, try to claim that Alexander was part of their families of gods. In the Egyption version, we read in a hieroglyphic message:
:
Being the son of the God Amen, who was frequently represented on the sculptures by a ram, it was only natural that the two horns of the animal should be made attributes of Alexander the Great and that he should be called "two-horned".
In the Ethiopic version, another reason is given. His title "two-horned", occures for the first time in a manuscript. The Ethiopic writers explain this title by saying that he was so called because he "ruled in the two horns of the Sun, the east and the west". 
In the Christian version, we are given another reason. . It also says: 
All these legend say that Alexander was a man who had power over the world. This looks similar to :
We also read in the legends: Similar ideas appear in the Quran. : : 
The legends also talk about Alexander travelling to the edge of the world to see where the sun sets and where the sun rises. The following is, according to the legends, what he saw near the rising place of the sun: says: So both the Quran and the legends agree about the sun rising near people with no protection from it. We also read in these legend A similar idea also appears in : 
These legends also speak about Alexander reaching a people near a huge mountain who have problems with some people. This is similar to the story of Gog and Magog found in the Qur'an. The legends also say: also tells us about Dhu al-Qarnayn build his wall using iron and copper. These are same materials also mentioned in the legend.
: which implies that Gog and Magog will get free from the barrier near the end of the world. The Alexander legends also tells that they will be released towards the ends of time and take over the world: In this hadith, concidered sahih,"Sunan Ibn Majah 4080" it is said that Gog and Magog will break the wall when they will ask nicely to Allah: 
Are all of these similarities pure coincidence?
===Conclusion===
The similarities between Dhu al-Qarnayn's story in the Quran and the legends around Alexander the Great are obvious. If the Quran was a perfect book, the litteral words of God, why would it use so much of the legends of Alexander the Great, especially legends that have nothing to do with the historical Alexander the Great?
Early Islamic scholars also identified Dhu al-Qarnayn as Alexander the Great."Tafsir al-Jalalayn" But due to growing evidence that Alexander the Great was a polytheist, many scholars started questioning this identification. Some have argued that Dhu al-Qarnayn is others have proposed other historical characters, while many prefer not speculating. But, as we showed above, all of these evidences suggest that Islam borrowed the story from legends around Alexander the Great. Modern Islamic apologists just suppose that their religion is right and they reach the conclusion that Dhu al-Qarnayn was not Alexander the Great because Dhu al-Qarnayn was a believer in Allah according to the Quran, not a polytheist.
==See also==
*Qur'anic scientific errors
==External links==
*Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part One) on WikiIslam
*Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring (Part Two) on WikiIslam
*Dhul-Qarnayn and the Alexander Romance on WikiIslam
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==Notes==
==References==
Category:Islam
Category:Religion
Category:Qur'an
Category:Apologetics and counter-apologetics
Category:Qur'an analysis