Lo! We made him strong in the land and gave him unto every thing a road. Say: 'I shall recite unto you a remembrance of him.' The verses of the chapter reproduced below show Dhu al-Qarnayn traveling first to the Western edge of the world 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: '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.' (Verses 18:83-98). The rabbis told them to ask Muhammad about three things, one of them 'about a man who travelled and reached the east and the west of the earth, what was his story'. The story of Dhu al-Qarnayn is related in Surah 18 of the Quran, al-Kahf (' The Cave') revealed to Muhammad when his tribe, Quraysh, sent two men to discover whether the Jews, with their superior knowledge of the scriptures, could advise them on whether Muhammad was a true prophet of God. Although some favor identification of Dhu al-Qarnayn with Cyrus the Great, the majority of modern scholars and commentators still prefer Alexander the Great. Some modern scholars have argued that the origin of the Quranic story may be found in the Syriac Alexander Legend, but others disagree. Įarly Muslim commentators and historians variously identified Dhu al-Qarnayn, most notably as Alexander the Great and as the South-Arabian Himyarite king al-Ṣaʿb bin Dhī Marāthid. Other apocalyptic writings predict that their destruction by God in a single night will usher in the Day of Resurrection ( Yawm al-Qiyāmah). Elsewhere the Quran tells how the end of the world will be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the barrier. 'He of the Two Horns') appears in the Quran, Surah Al-Kahf (18), Ayahs 83–101 as one who travels to east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog (called Ya'juj and Ma'juj). Persian miniature from a book of Falnama copied for the Safavid Shah Tahmasp I ( r. 1524–1576), currently preserved in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.ĭhu al-Qarnayn, ( Arabic: ذُو ٱلْقَرْنَيْن, romanized: Ḏū l-Qarnayn, IPA: lit.

Dhu al-Qarnayn building a wall with the help of Demons to keep away Gog and Magog.

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