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===Historical vs Legendary Alexander===
===Historical vs Legendary Alexander===


The Dhul-Qarnayn of the Qur'an is the Alexander of legend, not as some authors have asserted the Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC) of hisory<ref>For example, [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.understanding-islam.com%2Fq-and-a%2Fsources-of-islam%2Fwho-is-the-prophet-zulqarnain-5247&date=2013-11-25 Amar Ellahi Lone] completely ignores the Alexander Legends of the 4<sup>th</sup>-7<sup>th</sup> century and focuses on a historical account of Alexander. [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iranchamber.com%2Fhistory%2Farticles%2Fzolqarnain_cyrus_quran.php&date=2013-11-25 Baha'eddin Khoramshahi] rejects Alexander based solely on his historical identity. And [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fanswering-islam.org%2FAuthors%2FNewton%2Falex.r.html&date=2013-11-25 Khalid Jan] gives background information on the historical Alexander and why he is not a fit to the Qur'anic story.  Expresses no knowledge of the Alexander legends.</ref>.  Instead, it is based entirely upon legendary stories of Alexander which bare little resemblance to the Alexander of history.  In particular, the Qur'an parallels a Syriac legend where Alexander is portrayed as a monotheistic king who awaits the second coming of the Messiah and the end of the world.<ref name="Budge">{{cite web|url= http://books.google.com/books/about/The_History_of_Alexander_the_Great_Being.html?id=_14LmFqhc8QC|title= The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, Volume 1|publisher= The University Press|author= Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge|date= 1889|archiveurl= |deadurl=no}}</ref>
The Dhul-Qarnayn of the Qur'an is the Alexander of legend, not as some authors have asserted the Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC) of history<ref>For example, [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.understanding-islam.com%2Fq-and-a%2Fsources-of-islam%2Fwho-is-the-prophet-zulqarnain-5247&date=2013-11-25 Amar Ellahi Lone] completely ignores the Alexander Legends of the 4<sup>th</sup>-7<sup>th</sup> century and focuses on a historical account of Alexander. [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iranchamber.com%2Fhistory%2Farticles%2Fzolqarnain_cyrus_quran.php&date=2013-11-25 Baha'eddin Khoramshahi] rejects Alexander based solely on his historical identity. And [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fanswering-islam.org%2FAuthors%2FNewton%2Falex.r.html&date=2013-11-25 Khalid Jan] gives background information on the historical Alexander and why he is not a fit to the Qur'anic story.  Expresses no knowledge of the Alexander legends.</ref>.  Instead, it is based entirely upon legendary stories of Alexander which bare little resemblance to the Alexander of history.  In particular, the Qur'an parallels a Syriac legend where Alexander is portrayed as a monotheistic king who awaits the second coming of the Messiah and the end of the world.<ref name="Budge">{{cite web|url= http://books.google.com/books/about/The_History_of_Alexander_the_Great_Being.html?id=_14LmFqhc8QC|title= The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, Volume 1|publisher= The University Press|author= Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge|date= 1889|archiveurl= |deadurl=no}}</ref>


It has been well understood for many centuries that legendary accounts of Alexander's life began shortly after his death in 323 BC.  These were popular across most of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Persia and even India and China.  In the subsequent centuries after his death, the historical accounts of Alexander were largely forgotten and legendary accounts of his deeds and adventures replaced them in popular folklore.  It is these legendary depictions of Alexander that would have been known in the 7<sup>th</sup> century and not the historically accurate accounts of his life.  It was not until the Renaissance in the 16<sup>th</sup> century that the first historical accounts of Alexanders life were rediscovered and investigated.
It has been well understood for many centuries that legendary accounts of Alexander's life began shortly after his death in 323 BC.  These were popular across most of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Persia and even India and China.  In the subsequent centuries after his death, the historical accounts of Alexander were largely forgotten and legendary accounts of his deeds and adventures replaced them in popular folklore.  It is these legendary depictions of Alexander that would have been known in the 7<sup>th</sup> century and not the historically accurate accounts of his life.  It was not until the Renaissance in the 16<sup>th</sup> century that the first historical accounts of Alexanders life were rediscovered and investigated.
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In addition to the Dhu'l Qarnayn episode and its relationship with the Syriac Alexander legend, the story about Moses earlier in Surah al Kahf has long been noticed to derive from another story in the Alexander Romance tradition about Alexander's quest to find the water imparting immortality, featuring his cook, a dead fish that springs back to life from this water and escapes, and an attempt by Alexander to return to the water. In {{Quran-range|18|60|65}}, Moses travels to the junction of the two seas with his servant, who later realises that they have left their fish behind there, which has come back to life and swam away through a passage. When his servant later tells him this, Moses declares that this was the place they had been seeking. As Tommaso Tesei notes, "The most ancient versions of this story are found in three sources preceding or contemporaneous to the rise of Islam: the Rec. β of the Alexander Romance (fourth/fifth century), the Babylonian  Talmud (Tamīd, 32a–32b), and the so-called Syriac Alexander Song (ca. 630–635)".<ref>Tommaso Tesei (2015) [https://www.academia.edu/12761000/ Some Cosmological Notions from Late Antiquity in Q 18:60–65: The Quran in Light of Its Cultural Context] Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.1</ref>
In addition to the Dhu'l Qarnayn episode and its relationship with the Syriac Alexander legend, the story about Moses earlier in Surah al Kahf has long been noticed to derive from another story in the Alexander Romance tradition about Alexander's quest to find the water imparting immortality, featuring his cook, a dead fish that springs back to life from this water and escapes, and an attempt by Alexander to return to the water. In {{Quran-range|18|60|65}}, Moses travels to the junction of the two seas with his servant, who later realises that they have left their fish behind there, which has come back to life and swam away through a passage. When his servant later tells him this, Moses declares that this was the place they had been seeking. As Tommaso Tesei notes, "The most ancient versions of this story are found in three sources preceding or contemporaneous to the rise of Islam: the Rec. β of the Alexander Romance (fourth/fifth century), the Babylonian  Talmud (Tamīd, 32a–32b), and the so-called Syriac Alexander Song (ca. 630–635)".<ref>Tommaso Tesei (2015) [https://www.academia.edu/12761000/ Some Cosmological Notions from Late Antiquity in Q 18:60–65: The Quran in Light of Its Cultural Context] Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.1</ref>


This Syriac Alexander Song (also known as the memre, poem, or metrical homily about Alexander) in addition narrates Alexander's enclosure of Gog and Magog taken from the Syriac Alexander Legend. It is probably significant that both the water of life and Gog and Magog episodes are found in the Alexander Song and in surah al-Kahf, suggesting that they were present together also in an earlier common source.
This Syriac Alexander Song (also known as the memre, poem, or metrical homily about Alexander) in addition narrates Alexander's enclosure of Gog and Magog taken from the Syriac Alexander Legend. It is probably significant that both the water of life and Gog and Magog episodes are found in the Alexander Song and in surah al-Kahf, suggesting that they were present together also in an earlier common or intermediate source. Tesei, and similarly Muriel Debie, has since suggested that the Song could be as early as the last quarter of the 6th century, which has become possible following the redating of the Syriac Alexander Legend on which it is based (see Dating sections below).<ref>Tommaso Tesei 2024, p. 22</ref>


Gabriel Said Reynolds observes that the junction of the two seas to which Moses seeks to travel in Surah al-Kahf, as well as other passages that mention the two seas, most likely refer to the waters of the heavens and of the earth, and that "the two seas" is referred to with this meaning in other Syriac works. He provides a translation of the relevant sections from the Alexander Song:
Gabriel Said Reynolds observes that the junction of the two seas to which Moses seeks to travel in Surah al-Kahf, as well as other passages that mention the two seas, most likely refer to the waters of the heavens and of the earth, and that "the two seas" is referred to with this meaning in other Syriac works. He provides a translation of the relevant sections from the Alexander Song:
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====Two Horns====
====Two Horns====
[[File:Cyrus_stele_in_Pasagardae.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Stele in Pasagardae, which some think depicts Cyrus, though it is simply a winged tutelary diety according to most scholars.]]
[[File:Cyrus_stele_in_Pasagardae.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Stele in Pasagardae, which some earlier scholars interpreted as Cyrus, though it is now regarded as a winged tutelary diety.]]
In order to connect Cyrus to the epithet Dhul-Qarnayn (i.e. man with two-horns), proponents of this theory have pointed to a relief found on a doorway pillar near the tomb of Cyrus in Pasargadae, Iran. In these depictions, a set of horns can be seen as part of an Egyptian [[w:Hemhem crown|Hemhem]] head dress worn by a winged figure. Some scholars believe this to be a depiction of Cyrus, whose name was once inscribed at the top of the monument above the pillar.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mallowan |first1=Max |last2= |first2= |date=1972 |title=“Cyrus the Great (558-529 B.C.). |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4300460 |journal=Iran |volume= |issue=10 |pages=1-17 |doi=10.2307/4300460 |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref> Others note that the complex also once included human-headed winged bulls with crowns, and regard this as a protective doorway figure, inspired by Assyrian winged genii, and the words to be a "foundation inscription", also visible in two of the other palaces there.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pasargadae |title=PASARGADAE |last=Stronach |first=David |date=2009 |website=Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition |publisher=Encyclopædia Iranica |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/herzfeld-ernst-ii |title=HERZFELD, ERNST ii. HERZFELD AND PASARGADAE  |last=Stronach |first=David |date=2003 |website=Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition |publisher=Encyclopædia Iranica |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref> We have no other physical engravings or any other archaeological evidence that connects Cyrus with the epithet "two horns".
In order to connect Cyrus to the epithet Dhul-Qarnayn (i.e. man with two-horns), proponents of this theory have pointed to a relief found on a doorway pillar near the tomb of Cyrus in Pasargadae, Iran. In these depictions, a set of horns can be seen as part of an Egyptian [[w:Hemhem crown|Hemhem]] head dress worn by a winged figure. Some earlier scholars believed this to be a depiction of Cyrus, whose name was once inscribed at the top of the monument above the pillar.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mallowan |first1=Max |last2= |first2= |date=1972 |title=“Cyrus the Great (558-529 B.C.). |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4300460 |journal=Iran |volume= |issue=10 |pages=1-17 |doi=10.2307/4300460 |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref> It is now regarded as a protective doorway figure, inspired by Assyrian winged genii. It has been established that the incription was added later by Darius, and that the same inscription appeared in at least four other places in the complex (on two support pillars and on both sides of a portico). The complex also once included human-headed winged bulls with crowns.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sekunda |first=Nicholas |contribution=Changes in Achaemenid Royal Dress |title=The World of Achaemenid Persia. History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East |editor-last1=Curtis |editor-first1=John |editor-last2=Simpson |editor-first2=St John |publisher=I. B. Taurus |year=2010 |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_World_of_Achaemenid_Persia/DmGJDwAAQBAJ?gbpv=1 |isbn=9781848853461}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pasargadae |title=PASARGADAE |last=Stronach |first=David |date=2009 |website=Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition |publisher=Encyclopædia Iranica |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/herzfeld-ernst-ii |title=HERZFELD, ERNST ii. HERZFELD AND PASARGADAE  |last=Stronach |first=David |date=2003 |website=Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition |publisher=Encyclopædia Iranica |access-date=8 March 2021}}</ref> We have no other physical engravings or any other archaeological evidence that connects Cyrus with the epithet "two horns".


====Religious practices of Cyrus====
====Religious practices of Cyrus====
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The historical nature of the story in the Islamic narrative is affirmed by the following Sahih Hadith by Bukhari which relates that Muhammad viewed this wall (here called a dam) holding back Gog and Magog as a real structure that was facing immanent demise. In this account, he also reiterates that the wall's destruction will bring about death and destruction of the land when the tribes held behind it are let loose.
The historical nature of the story in the Islamic narrative is affirmed by the following Sahih Hadith by Bukhari which relates that Muhammad viewed this wall (here called a dam) holding back Gog and Magog as a real structure that was facing immanent demise. In this account, he also reiterates that the wall's destruction will bring about death and destruction of the land when the tribes held behind it are let loose.


{{Quote|{{Bukhari|9|88|249}}|Narrated Zainab bint Jahsh:
{{Quote|{{Bukhari|||7135|darussalam}}|Narrated Zainab bint Jahsh:


That one day Allah's Apostle entered upon her in a state of fear and said, "None has the right to be worshipped but Allah! Woe to the Arabs from the Great evil that has approached (them). Today a hole has been opened in the dam of Gog and Magog like this." The Prophet made a circle with his index finger and thumb. Zainab bint Jahsh added: I said, "O Alllah's Apostle! Shall we be destroyed though there will be righteous people among us?" The Prophet said, "Yes, if the (number) of evil (persons) increased."}}As well as in the Sahih Muslim collection as one of the 10 signs of judgement day:
That one day Allah's Apostle entered upon her in a state of fear and said, "None has the right to be worshipped but Allah! Woe to the Arabs from the Great evil that has approached (them). Today a hole has been opened in the dam of Gog and Magog like this." The Prophet made a circle with his index finger and thumb. Zainab bint Jahsh added: I said, "O Alllah's Apostle! Shall we be destroyed though there will be righteous people among us?" The Prophet said, "Yes, if the (number) of evil (persons) increased."}}As well as in the Sahih Muslim collection as one of the 10 signs of judgement day:
{{Quote|{{Muslim|7|2650}}|Hudhaifa b. Usaid al-Ghifari reported: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He said: What do you discuss about? They (the Companions) said. We are discussing about the Last Hour. Thereupon he said: It will not come until you see ten signs before and (in this connection) he made a mention of the smoke, Dajjal, the beast, the rising of the sun from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary (Allah be pleased with him), <b>the Gog and Magog,</b> and land-slides in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from the Yemen, and would drive people to the place of their assembly.}}
{{Quote|{{Muslim||1178a|reference}}|Hudhaifa b. Usaid al-Ghifari reported: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He said: What do you discuss about? They (the Companions) said. We are discussing about the Last Hour. Thereupon he said: It will not come until you see ten signs before and (in this connection) he made a mention of the smoke, Dajjal, the beast, the rising of the sun from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary (Allah be pleased with him), <b>the Gog and Magog,</b> and land-slides in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from the Yemen, and would drive people to the place of their assembly.}}
And in the Sunan Ibn Majah collection, a hadith (rated 'Sahih' (authentic) by Darussalam) says that they will try to dig out, but Allah will replace the wall overnight when they are close to breaking through. Until eventually they will be allowed to break through, drink all the water, and defeat the people on Earth and heaven, and then Allah will kill them:
And in the Sunan Ibn Majah collection, a hadith (rated 'Sahih' (authentic) by Darussalam) says that they will try to dig out, but Allah will replace the wall overnight when they are close to breaking through. Until eventually they will be allowed to break through, drink all the water, and defeat the people on Earth and heaven, and then Allah will kill them:
{{Quote|{{Ibn Majah||5|36|4080}}|It was narrated from Abu Hurairah that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:
{{Quote|{{Ibn Majah||5|36|4080}}|It was narrated from Abu Hurairah that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:
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==See Also==
==See Also==


{{Hub4|Category:Dhul-Qarnayn|Dhul-Qarnayn}}
* [[Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part One]] and [[Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part Two|Part Two]]
* {{Hub4|Cosmology|Cosmology}}
 
==External Links==


* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty_2G_esUvI The Masked Arab - The lost tribes of Gog and Magog] - YouTube Video
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty_2G_esUvI The Masked Arab - The lost tribes of Gog and Magog] - YouTube Video
{{Hub4|Cosmology|Cosmology}}


==References==
==References==
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