, (, ; "The Owner of Two-Horns") is a leader who appears in the Quran, al-Kahf, 83–101, as one who travels to the east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog (). Elsewhere, the Qur'an tells how the end of the world will be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the barrier. Other apocalyptic writings predict that their destruction by God in a single night will usher in the Day of Resurrection ().
Dhu al-Qarnayn has most popularly been identified by Western and traditional Muslim scholars as Alexander the Great.: "It is generally agreed both by Muslim commentators and modéra sic occidental scholars that Dhu ’l-Ḳarnayn ... is to be identified with Alexander the Great." : "... (usually identified with Alexander the Great) ...". Historically, some tradition has parted from this identification
Al Ahaad wal Mathani by Ibn Abi Asim: 141
Jami' Bayan al Ilm by Ibn Abd al Barr: 464
Al Mashyakha al Baghadadiyya by Abi Tahrir al Silafi: 27
Cyril Glasse writes that the reference to "He of the two horns" also has a symbolical interpretation: “He of the two Ages”, which reflects the eschatological shadow that Alexander casts from his time, which preceded Islam by many centuries, until the end of the world. The Arabian word qarn means both "horn" and “period” or “century”. Classical commentary from Al-Qurtubi has reported the narration from Al-Suhayli commentaries that he favored the identification that Dhu al-Qarnayn were actually two different persons, where one lived during the time of Abraham, while the other has lived during the time of Jesus.
While the Syriac Alexander Legend references the horns of Alexander, it consistently refers to the hero by his Greek name, not using a variant epithet. The use of the Islamic epithet "Two-Horned", first occurred in the Quran. The reasons behind the name "Two-Horned" are somewhat obscure: the scholar al-Tabari (839-923 CE) held it was because he went from one extremity ("horn") of the world to the other, but it may ultimately derive from imagery of the horns of Alexander, inspired by the tradition of his descent from the ram-god Amun, as popularised on coins throughout the Hellenistic Near East.
The wall builds on his northern journey may have reflected a distant knowledge of the Great Wall of China (the 12th-century scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi drew a map for Roger II of Sicily showing the "Land of Gog and Magog" in Mongolia), or of various Sasanian Empire walls built in the Caspian Sea region against the northern barbarians, or a conflation of the two.
also journeys to the western and eastern extremities ("qarns", tips) of the Earth. Ernst claims that finding the sun setting in a "muddy spring" in the West is equivalent to the "poisonous sea" found by Alexander in the Syriac legend. In the Syriac story Alexander tested the sea by sending condemned prisoners into it, while the Quran refers to this as an administration of justice. In the East both the Syrian legend and the Quran, according to Ernst, have Alexander/ find a people who live so close to the rising sun that they have no protection from its heat.
Some exegetes believed that Dhu al-Qarnayn lived near the time of Abraham following accounts by al-Azraqi and Ibn Abi Hatim. To avoid this chronological discrepancy, several medieval exegetes and historians did not identify Dhu al-Qarnayn with Alexander. Al-Tabari inferred that there were two Dhu al-Qarnayn's: the earlier one, called Dhu al-Qarnayn al-Akbar, who lived in the time of Abraham, and the later one, who was Alexander. In one account concerning Abraham building a well at Beersheba, Dhu al-Qarnayn seems to have been placed in the role of Abimelech as described in Gen 21:22–34.
Other notable Muslim commentators, including ibn Kathir,:100-101 ibn Taymiyyah,:101 and Naser Makarem Shirazi, have used theological arguments to reject the Alexander identification: Alexander lived only a short time whereas (according to some traditions) lived for 700 years as a sign of God's blessing, though this is not mentioned in the Quran, and Dhu al-Qarnayn tawhid, while Alexander was a polytheist. Due to this, most modern Ulama deny that Alexander the Great is Dhu al-Qarnayn
Academic scholars consider the Sa'b story to be an appropriation of the Syriac Alexander Legend. While Ibn Hisham's book made use of Wahb's material, Tilman Nagel doubts that Wahb's text included this particular story given Ibn Hisham's sceptical attitude to the claims of Southern Arabians, and notes that al-Tabari relied on Wahb's Alexander story yet included no Himyarite (South Arabian) elements. Following a detailed analysis, Nagel instead defines the milieu in which this version emerged as that of South Arabians in early eighth-century Egypt, and observes that Southern Arabs were one of two factions who vied for power in the Umayyad empire.
Richard Stoneman notes that Wahb was known for the composition of qisas, in which folklore is served up as history. According to Stoneman, the South Arabian legend was composed within the context of the division between the South Arabs and North Arabs that began with the Battle of Marj Rahit in 684 AD and consolidated over two centuries. He too dates the story to the 8th century CE, intended to give a parallel for, and to justify, the Islamic conquests in the west, representing a glorification of the South Arabian traditions and their conquests in Egypt. Anna Akasoy agrees with Alfred Beeston that Sa'b's entire existence is fictional and a product of Yemeni chauvinism, noting that later Yemeni Kings whose existence is confirmed were assigned similar exploits borrowed from legends of Alexander. According to Wheeler, it is possible that some elements of these accounts that were originally associated with Ṣaʿb have been incorporated into stories which identify Dhu al-Qarnayn with Alexander.
This theory was proposed in 1855 by the German philologist G. M. Redslob, but it did not gain followers in the west. Among Muslim commentators, it was first promoted by Sayyed Ahmad Khan (d. 1889), then by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose commentary became popular in 1970s Pahlavi Iran, and generated wider acceptance over the years.
Brannon Wheeler argues that it would be possible to make that identification based on what is known of the conquests of Cyrus. However, the Arabic histories did not view Cyrus as a conqueror in the sense described in Q 18:83-102, and the early Quran commentaries did not identify Cyrus with Dhu al-Qarnayn.
Another Hispano-Arabic legend featuring Dhu al-Qarnayn, representing Alexander, is the Hadith Dhulqarnayn (or the Leyenda de Alejandro). In one of the many Arabic and Persian language versions depicting Alexander's encounter with Indian sages, the Persian Sunni Sufi theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111) describes a scene where Dhu al-Qarnayn meets a people who own nothing but dig graves outside their homes. Their king explains that death is life's only certainty, a reason for their practices. Ghazali's interpretation found its way into the One Thousand and One Nights.
The esteemed medieval Persian poet Rumi (1207-1273) wrote about Dhu al-Qarnayn's eastward travels. Here, the hero climbs Mount Qaf, the emerald 'mother' of all mountains encircling the Earth, its veins spreading below every land. Upon Dhu al-Qarnayn's request, the mountain reveals how earthquakes occur: when God wills it, one of its veins pulsates, triggering a tremor. Atop this grand mountain, Dhu al-Qarnayn encounters Israfil (archangel Raphael), prepared to sound the trumpet on Judgement Day.
The Malay epic Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain links several Southeast Asian royal lines to Iskandar Zulkarnain;
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