Who is Dhul qarnayn in Islam?

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

Dhul-Qarnayn, translated as “the possessor of the two horns,” is a legendary king mentioned in Chapter 18 of The Quran, Sura al-Kahf (“The Cave”).

Since Dhul-Qarnayn is alleged to be a historical figure, scholars over the centuries have continuously debated his identity. Interestingly, a large number of scholars agree that he was a pre-Islamic figure not associated with Jews or Christians, the traditional “Peoples of the Book.” In fact, most schools of thought consider him to be either Alexander the Great, a pagan, or Cyrus the Great, a Zoroastrian.

The final story in Surah Al Kahf is in relation to Dhul-Qarnayn. This story, including the story ofthe People of the Cave, was revealed in response to the efforts by the Jews of Mecca to discredit Rasulullah SAW. Their scholars had knowledge of certain tales only known to the religious elite amongst them, and they challenged Rasulullah SAW by giving him certain key words and asking him to describe these stories in full to prove that he was indeed a Prophet. Not having Jewish or Christian ancestry, these stories were not known to the community of Mekkah at that time and were not part of their traditions. So, the only means of which Rasulullah SAW could have told them the details was if the story was revealed by Allah himself (through the angel Jibril AS).
What is known is that Dhul-Qarnayn was a man endowed by Allah with many talents and abilities, including military prowess, the ability to rule kingdoms, and extensive practical knowledge on many aspects of life. He was also a pious and steadfast Muslim who constantly contemplated over the signs of Allah and lived his days travelling from one destination to the next in order to establish justice in the land and alleviate the suffering of the people.
Indeed We established him upon the earth, and We gave him to everything a way. So he followed a way. (Al Qur’an 18:84 – 18:85)

The Travels of Dhul-Qarnayn

Dhul-Qarnayn travelled extensively in his life. It is said that he ruled the earth from east to west, but it is noted that Allah only revealed part of this story to us. We therefore record what is revealed in the Qu’ran, and will not cite information which is not verified by authentic sources.
One of this travels brought him to the West, where he found the sun setting as if in a spring of dark mud. In this location he discovered a community who were living under oppressed conditions.
Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it [as if] setting in a spring of dark mud, and he found near it a people. Allah said, “O Dhul-Qarnayn, either you punish [them] or else adopt among them [a way of] goodness.” (Al Qur’an 18:86)
So Dhul-Qarnayn went into the community and led them to the correct path and ways of life in accordance with the rulings of the Almighty. He liberated the community from the oppression that they were subject to, inflicted punishment upon the oppressors, criminals and evildoers and aided the weak and oppressed until justice was established in the land.
He said, “As for one who wrongs, we will punish him. Then he will be returned to his Lord, and He will punish him with a terrible punishment. But as for one who believes and does righteousness, he will have a reward of Paradise, and we will speak to him from our command with ease.” (Al Qur’an 18:87 – 18:88)
Having completed his task, he and his army continued on their journey, until one day, against the rising sun, he found a people who were backward and ignorant, living in the open without any shelter or protection against the sun.
Then he followed a way. Until, when he came to the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had not made against it any shield. (Al Qur’an 18:90)
He educated the community there on what they needed to do. He shared and imparted his knowledge to them, taught them the skills required such as carpentry and agriculture, and then continued on his journey.
Thus. And We had encompassed [all] that he had in knowledge. (Al Qur’an 18:91)
The next part of his journey is the most astounding, where he met a curious community, so far removed that he barely understood their language.
Then he followed a way. Until, when he reached [a pass] between two mountains, he found beside them a people who could hardly understand [his] speech. (Al Qur’an 18:92 – 18:93)
They said, “O Dhul-Qarnayn, indeed (Ya’juj) Gog and Magog (Ma’juj) are [great] corrupters in the land. So may we assign for you an expenditure that you might make between us and them a barrier?” (Al Qur’an 18:94)

Written by Muslim Footsteps

Alexander romance

Alexander romance, any of a body of legends about the career of Alexander the Great, told and retold with varying emphasis and purpose by succeeding ages and civilizations.


The chief source of all Alexander romance literature was a folk epic written in Greek by a Hellenized Egyptian in Alexandria during the 2nd century AD. Surviving translations and copies make its reconstruction possible. It portrayed Alexander as a national messianic hero, the natural son of an Egyptian wizard-king by the wife of Philip II of Macedon. Magic and marvels played a subsidiary part in the epic—in the story of Alexander’s birth, for example, and in his meeting with the Amazons in India. In later romances, however, marvels and exotic anecdotes predominated and gradually eclipsed the historical personality. Minor episodes in the original were filled out, often through “letters” supposedly written by or to Alexander, and an independent legend about his capture of the wild peoples of Gog and Magog was incorporated into several texts of many vernacular versions. An account of the Alexander legends was included in a 9th-century Old English translation of Orosius’ history of the world. In the 11th century a Middle Irish Alexander romance appeared, and about 1100, the Middle High German Annolied. During the 12th century, Alexander appeared as a pattern of knightly chivalry in a succession of great poems, beginning with the Roman d’Alexandre by Albéric de Briançon. This work inspired the Alexanderlied by the German poet Lamprecht der Pfaffe. An Anglo-Norman poet, Thomas of Kent, wrote the Roman de toute chevalerie toward the end of the 12th century, and about 1275 this was remodeled to become the Middle English romance of King Alisaunder. Italian Alexander romances began to appear during the 14th century, closely followed by versions in Swedish, Danish, Scots, and (dating from a little earlier) in the Slavic languages.

Eastern accounts of Alexander’s fabled career paid a good deal of attention to the Gog and Magog episode, a version of this story being included in the Qurʾān. The Arabs, expanding Syrian versions of the legend, passed them on to the many peoples with whom they came in contact. Through them, the Persian poets, notably Neẓāmī in the 12th century, gave the stories new form.
Alexander romance literature declined in the late 12th century, and, with the revival of classical scholarship during the Renaissance, historical accounts displaced the Alexander romances.



https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dhul-Qarn...xander_Romance

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

[Laly]

I am surprised that none of the posts above considers what I think is the most important implication this borrowing would have. In fact, this Quranic pericope tremendously resembles a particular version of the Alexander Romance, a Syriac one, that was written in 629-630, most probably in 630. So, it would mean that this Quranic passage was not written before 630, and the most probable is that the Syriac text was known to “Muslim” communities only after the conquests, at least in 635. And if you accept (dogmatically) the traditional order of the surah, then it would mean that at least half of the Quran would have been elaborated/created after the death of the “prophet”.

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

Dating and origins of the Alexander legends


The legendary Alexander material originated as early as the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305 BC to 30 BC) and its unknown authors are sometimes referred to as the Pseudo-Callisthenes (not to be confused with Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was Alexander's official historian). The earliest surviving manuscript of the Alexander romance, called the α (alpha) recension, can be dated to the 3rd century AD and was written in Greek in Alexandria:

There have been many theories regarding the date and sources of this curious work [the Alexander romance]. According to the most recent authority, ... it was compiled by a Greco-Egyptian writing in Alexandria about A.D. 300. The sources on which the anonymous author drew were twofold. On the one hand he made use of a `romanticized history of Alexander of a highly rhetorical type depending on the Cleitarchus tradition, and with this he amalgamated a collection of imaginary letters derived from an Epistolary Romance of Alexander written in the first century B.C. He also included two long letters from Alexander to his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle describing his marvellous adventures in India and at the end of the World. These are the literary expression of a living popular tradition and as such are the most remarkable and interesting part of the work.^[16]

The Greek variants of the Alexander romance continued to evolve until, in the 4th century, the Greek legend was translated into Latin by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius (where it is called the Res gestae Alexandri Magni) and from Latin it spread to all major vernacular languages of Europe in the Middle Ages. Around the same as its translation into Latin, the Greek text was also translated into the Syriac language and from Syriac it spread to eastern cultures and languages as far afield as China and Southeast Asia.^[17] The Syriac legend was the source of an Arabic variant called the Qisas Dhul-Qarnayn (Tales of Dhul-Qarnayn)^[18] and a Persian variant called the Iskandarnamah (Book of Alexander), as well as Armenian and Ethiopic translations.^[19]
The version recorded in Syriac is of particular importance because it was current in the Middle East during the time of the Quran's writing and is regarded as being closely related to the literary and linguistic origins of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Quran. The Syriac legend, as it has survived, consists of five distinct manuscripts, including a Syriac Christian religious legend concerning Alexander and a sermon about Alexander ascribed to the Syriac poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh (451–521 AD, also called Mar Jacob), which according to Reinink was composed around 629–636.^[20] The Syriac Christian legend concentrates on Alexander's journey to the end of the World, where he constructs the Gates of Alexander to enclose the evil nations of Gog and Magog, while the sermon describes his journey to the Land of Darkness to discover the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth). These legends concerning Alexander are remarkably similar to the story of Dhul-Qarnayn found in the Quran.^[21]
One of the five Syriac manuscripts, dated to the 18th century, has a version of the Syriac legend that has been generally dated to between 629 AD and 636 AD. There is evidence in the legend of "ex eventu knowledge of the Khazar invasion of Armenia in A.D. 629,"^[22][23] which suggests that the legend must have been burdened with additions by a redactor sometime around 629 AD. The legend appears to have been composed as propaganda in support of Emperor Heraclius (575–641 AD) shortly after he defeated the Persians in the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628. It is notable that this manuscript fails to mention the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 636 AD by Muhammad's (570–632 AD) successor, Caliph Umar (590–644 AD). This fact means that the legend might have been recorded before the "cataclysmic event"` that was the Muslim conquest of Syria and the resulting surrender of Jerusalem in November 636 AD. That the Byzantine–Arab Wars would have been referenced in the legend, had it been written after 636 AD, is supported by the fact that in 692 AD a Syriac Christian adaption of the Alexander romance called the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was indeed written as a response to the Muslim invasions and was falsely attributed to St Methodius (?–311 AD); this Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius equated the evil nations of Gog and Magog with the Muslim invaders and shaped the eschatological imagination of Christendom for centuries.^[21]
The manuscripts also contain evidence of lost texts. For example, there is some evidence of a lost pre-Islamic Arabic version of the translation that is thought to have been an intermediary between the Syriac Christian and the Ethiopic Christian translations.^[24] There is also evidence that the Syriac translation was not directly based on the Greek recensions but was based on a lost Pahlavi (pre-Islamic Persian) intermediary.^[16]
One scholar (Kevin van Bladel)^[25] who finds striking similarities between the Quranic verses 18:83-102 and the Syriac legend in support of Emperor Heraclius, dates the work to 629-630 AD or before Muhammad's death, not 629-636 AD.^[26] The Syriac legend matches many details in the five parts of the verses (Alexander being the two horned one, journey to edge of the world, punishment of evil doers, Gog and Magog, etc.) and also "makes some sense of the cryptic Qur'anic story" being 21 pages (in one edition)^[26] not 20 verses. (The sun sets in a fetid poisonous ocean—not spring—surrounding the earth, Gog and Magog are Huns, etc.) Van Bladel finds it more plausible that the Syriac legend is the source of the Quranic verses than vice versa, as the Syriac legend was written before the Arab conquests when the Hijazi Muslim community was still remote from and little known to the Mesopotamian site of the legend's creation, whereas Arabs worked as troops and scouts for during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and could have been exposed to the legend.

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

Orientalist and western views[edit]

In the 19th century, Orientalists studying the Quran began researching the identity of Dhul-Qarnayn. Theodor Nöldeke, believed that Dhul-Qarnayn was none other than Alexander the Great as mentioned in versions of the Alexander romance and related literature in Syriac (a dialect of Middle Aramaic).^[78] The Syriac manuscripts were translated into English in 1889 by E. A. Wallis Budge.^[45]
In the early 20th century Andrew Runni Anderson wrote a series of articles on the question in the Transactions of the American Philological Association.^[36] The findings of the philologists imply that the source of the Quran's story of Dhul-Qarnayn is the Alexander romance, a thoroughly embellished compilation of Alexander's exploits from Hellenistic and early Christian sources, which underwent numerous expansions and revisions for two-thousand years, throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages.^[79]
As can be seen in the following quotation from Edwards, secular philologists studying ancient Syriac Christian legends about Alexander the Great also came to the conclusion that Dhul-Qarnayn is an ancient epithet for Alexander the Great. Edwards says,

Alexander's association with two horns and with the building of the gate against Gog and Magog occurs much earlier than the Quran and persists in the beliefs of all three of these religions [Judaism, Christianity and Islam]. The denial of Alexander's identity as Dhul-Qarnain is the denial of a common heritage shared by the cultures which shape the modern world—both in the east and the west. The popularity of the legend of Alexander the Great proves that these cultures share a history which suggests that perhaps they are not so different after all.^[79]

Although modern academics have found that the oldest Alexander romance does not contain the episode where Alexander build the gates against Gog and Magog,

The Syriac tradition is one of the most interesting versions of the many existing oriental redactions of the Romance. It dates from the 7th century and goes back on a quite similar Vorlage of the Greek recensio vetusta (n).4 The Syrian redactor, probably an East Syrian Christian, added a certain number of until then unknown episodes to the text. The episode of Alexander's building a wall against Gog and Magog, however, is not found in the oldest Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac versions of the Romance

[Laly]

The denial of Alexander's identity as Dhul-Qarnain is the denial of a common heritage shared by the cultures which shape the modern world—both in the east and the west. The popularity of the legend of Alexander the Great proves that these cultures share a history which suggests that perhaps they are not so different after all.

The denial towards non-Islamic cultural and historical heritage, as well as the indifference towards non-Islamic cultures are huge. In the Middle Ages, there used to be an important movement of translations in the Islamic world, concerning texts about “natural philosophy”, and it stopped in the Xth century, from Greek, but not only. And what’s interesting is that the Muslims were never interested in studying and translating literature (like Greek tragedies, mythology). That would be because Muslims are convinced of the superiority of their civilisation, so not only they despise the Occident, but they ignore it.

In the beginning of the XVIth century, Guillaume Postel taught Arabic and Hebrew in the “College of Royal Lecturers” founded by Francis I of France, but nobody took care of learning French in Cairo, Damascus or Istanbul. More than two centuries after, when Napoleon Bonaparte went to Egypt, the Europeans had tens of Arabic, Persian and Turkish grammars and dictionaries. There was none concerning European languages in front. And it is only four centuries after the invention of printing that the ulemas finally accepted to open a press in Istanbul...

The annual reports of the United Nations on development, written by Arabs, are scary. We learn, for example, that the whole Arab-Muslim world has translated in the last ten centuries less foreign works than nowadays Spain in one year. Sorry for the reference concerning this comparison, I found it in a book in French:

https://books.google.be/books?id=R5w...n%20an&f=false

The popularity of the legend of Alexander the Great proves that these cultures share a history which suggests that perhaps they are not so different after all.

This is very optimistic...

[Laly]

The version recorded in Syriac is of particular importance because it was current in the Middle East during the time of the Quran's writing and is regarded as being closely related to the literary and linguistic origins of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Quran. The Syriac legend, as it has survived, consists of five distinct manuscripts, including a Syriac Christian religious legend concerning Alexander and a sermon about Alexander ascribed to the Syriac poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh (451–521 AD, also called Mar Jacob), which according to Reinink was composed around 629–636.^[20] The Syriac Christian legend concentrates on Alexander's journey to the end of the World, where he constructs the Gates of Alexander to enclose the evil nations of Gog and Magog, while the sermon describes his journey to the Land of Darkness to discover the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth). These legends concerning Alexander are remarkably similar to the story of Dhul-Qarnayn found in the Quran.^[21]
[COLOR=#202122][FONT=sans-serif]One of the five Syriac manuscripts, dated to the 18th century, has a version of the Syriac legend that has been generally dated to between 629 AD and 636 AD. There is evidence in the legend of "ex eventu knowledge of the Khazar invasion of Armenia in A.D. 629,"^[22][23] which suggests that the legend must have been burdened with additions by a redactor sometime around 629 AD. The legend appears to have been composed as propaganda in support of Emperor Heraclius (575–641 AD) shortly after he defeated the Persians in the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628.

This is indeed what I was referring to.

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

The denial towards non-Islamic cultural and historical heritage, as well as the indifference towards non-Islamic cultures are huge. In the Middle Ages, there used to be an important movement of translations in the Islamic world, concerning texts about “natural philosophy”, and it stopped in the Xth century, from Greek, but not only. And what’s interesting is that the Muslims were never interested in studying and translating literature (like Greek tragedies, mythology). That would be because Muslims are convinced of the superiority of their civilisation, so not only they despise the Occident, but they ignore it.

In the beginning of the XVIth century, Guillaume Postel taught Arabic and Hebrew in the “College of Royal Lecturers” founded by Francis I of France, but nobody took care of learning French in Cairo, Damascus or Istanbul. More than two centuries after, when Napoleon Bonaparte went to Egypt, the Europeans had tens of Arabic, Persian and Turkish grammars and dictionaries. There was none concerning European languages in front. And it is only four centuries after the invention of printing that the ulemas finally accepted to open a press in Istanbul...

The annual reports of the United Nations on development, written by Arabs, are scary. We learn, for example, that the whole Arab-Muslim world has translated in the last ten centuries less foreign works than nowadays Spain in one year. Sorry for the reference concerning this comparison, I found it in a book in French:

https://books.google.be/books?id=R5w...n%20an&f=false



This is very optimistic...

I also noted that most of the cultural exchanges between the medieval islamic word and neighboring civilizations revolved around technology and utilitarian knowledge.
greek philosophy and epistemology had a quite limited impact, and was eventually rejected.