Dhul-Qarnayn and the Sun Setting in a Muddy Spring - Part One: Difference between revisions

This does not mean that Ibn Ishaq (or his source) did not believe that Dhu’l Qarnayn reached the setting and rising places of the sun. Unlike the commentators quoted above, Ibn Ishaq is not denying that Dhu’l Qarnayn did so. In the Arabic it literally says that there was nothing from creation behind these places, so it must mean the edges of a flat Earth, and the setting-place would be at the western edge and the rising place at the eastern edge. He even uses a different word order: mashriq then maghrib rather than maghrib then matliAA as in the Qur’an. This suggests he was simply quoting a common phrase to summarize Dhu’l Qarnayn’s adventure.  

Given all of the problems detailed above (especially the extraordinary coincidence required by the two elements in each verse; that a'''l'''shshamsi is never used when the meaning is merely east or west; that matliAA is never used in a phrase that means the east; and the problem of what wajadaha refers to in the next phrases), it is clear that the west/east idiom interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 cannot be correct.

===Compatibility with contemporary beliefs===

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that in the same article just mentioned<ref>Van Bladel 2007a op. cit.</ref>, Van Bladel describes how Christian theologians in the region of Syria in the sixth century CE shared the view that the Earth was flat and the sky or heaven was like a tent above the Earth, based on their reading of the Hebrew scriptures. This was a rival view to that of the churchmen of Alexandria who supported the Ptolemaic view of a spherical Earth surrounded by celestial spheres. He says, “Clearly the Ptolemaic cosmology was not taken for granted in the Aramaean part of Asia in the sixth century. It was, rather, controversial.”

The hadith continues with a description of an angel who releases parts of a veil of darkness each night, and how the sun and moon will behave at the end of the world.

{{Quote||Dhu al-Qarnayn before me submitted himself [to God], a king to whom the other kings became humble and thronged [his court]. He reigned over the Eastern and Western lands, yet sought the means of knowledge from a wise, rightly guided scholar. He witnessed the setting of the sun in its resting place into a pool of black and foetid slime.<ref>Al-Tabari, History of al-Tabari, Volume 5 - The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, trans. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, pp. 173-174, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999</ref>}}

Whatever the historical relationship between these texts<ref>Van Bladel’s thesis is that the Syriac Alexander Legend is the source for the Qur’anic account, rather than the other way around (which is indeed highly unlikely due to strongly evidenced dating of the former to 629-630 CE), or them having a common source. However, it is worth wondering if he dismisses a common source too easily. The key point of his argument appears on page 189-190:<BR><BR>"''If Alexander’s prophecy was composed just for this purpose at this time [i.e. as propaganda for the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius – the prophecy in the Alexander Legend evidently serves this purpose], then the correspondence between the Syriac and the Arabic, which contains the same prophecy reworded, cannot be due to an earlier, shared source. Put differently, the only way to posit a common source is to assume that everything held in common between the Qur’anic account and the Syraic Alexander Legend could have been written for and would have made sense in an earlier context.''"<BR><BR>However, it seems Dhu’l Qarnayn’s prophecy in the Qur’an would have been meaningful before Heraclius and before Muhammad. As we saw, the story of Alexander’s gate enclosing Gog and Magog goes back at least as far as Josephus (or, at least enclosing the Scythians, who Josephus says are what the Greeks call the people of Magog in Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:1). We also know that the Christians believed that Gog and Magog would wage war across the world in the end times (see Revelation 20:7-10). Thus the simple, Qur’anic version of the prophecy about Gog and Magog would have made sense in a pre-Islamic Christian story about Alexander without needing a contempory invasion to motivate it ex eventu. Very significantly, it appears again briefly in 21:96 in a way that makes clear it has not been fulfilled yet. Van Bladel believes that the omission of the Alexander Legend’s pro Roman element in the Qur’anic account reflects some attitude of Muhammad’s community (p.196). Instead that element and others could just be adaptations to the common source to turn it into an ex eventu prophecy for the specific purposes behind the Alexander Legend. A common source also better explains the fact that in the Qur’anic version, “…not a single Syriac word is found, but rather there are true Arabic equivalents of Syriac words…” (Van Bladel 2007b, op. cit. p.194). This seems surprising if the Qur’anic account is directly related to the Syriac version, but not if there is a common source in Arabic or a 3rd language.</ref> and whether or not Dhu’l Qarnayn is meant to be Alexander the Great, it is clear from the legend that the setting and rising places interpretation of 18:86 and 18:90 was entirely compatible with contemporary beliefs in the region. Indeed, verse 18:83 tells us that what follows was supposed to relate to an already known story (“They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain”).

{{Quote||Have I not told you that destiny slays by guile,

And, where the sun climbs, barred the hills to Gog and Magog.<ref>Imru’ l-Qays, Diwan 158 quoted in Norris, H. T. (transl.), “Fables and Legends” In [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4sFzGGqA6uoC&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres], Eds. J. Ashtiany et al., p. 138-139, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990</ref>}}

{{Quote||Ours the realm of Dhu ’l-Qarnayn the glorious,

Till on Judgement Day they shall awake at last<ref>Hāssan b. Thābit quoted in R. A. Nicholson (transl.), [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LBY0AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA18#v=onepage&q&f=false A Literary History of the Arabs], p. 18, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1907</ref>}}

The above hadith, tafsir (commentaries), legends and poetry, are strong circumstantial evidence that the literal setting of the sun in a spring and a literal rising of the sun are the intended meanings in the Qur’an’s version of the same story. Otherwise there would surely be some sign of an alternative interpretation among these early sources given that there was clearly great interest in the story, and Muhammad would have corrected any misunderstanding when people asked him about it.  

We saw above the hadith referring to “the rising place”, “the setting place”, “its rising place” and “your setting place” in the singular. Both there and in the Qur’an it would mean the place where the sun set and the place where it rose on those particular days whether one or many were imagined to exist.  

====Why does it only say the people in 18:90 lacked shelter?====