Alexander in the Qur'an (theory)
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The Qur'an, the sacred book of Islam, mentions a character called "Dhul-Qarnayn". The true identity of this character has been disputed, but over the centuries, the majority of scholars of the Qur'an and Islam have identified this person as Alexander the Great. The majority of the medieval Muslim scholars were happy to identify Alexander as Dhul-Qarnayn. Most modern scholars still do, even though competing theories exist (see the main article Dhul-Qarnayn for more information). The reasons why are herein stated.
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Alexander the Great as Dhul-Qarnayn
The basic argument for identifying Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great is that the Quranic account follows very closely the Alexander Romance, a thoroughly embellished history of Alexander's exploits from Hellenistic and early Christian sources.
Alexander the Great was an immensely popular figure in the classical and post-classical cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East. Almost immediately after his death a body of legend began to accumulate about his exploits and life which, over the centuries, became increasingly fantastic as well as allegorical. Collectively this tradition is called the Alexander Romance and features such vivid episodes as Alexander ascending through the air to Paradise or journeying to the bottom of the sea in a glass bubble.
The Alexander Romance was incorporated into various Jewish and later Christian legends, from whence it passed to Arabia and Muhammad, according to secular historians.
Jewish legends
In the Jewish tradition Alexander was initially a figure of satire, representing the vain or covetous ruler who is ignorant of larger spiritual truths. Yet their belief in a just, all-powerful God forced Jewish interpreters of the Alexander tradition to come to terms with Alexander's undeniable temporal success. Why would a just, all-powerful God show such favor to an unrighteous ruler? This theological need, plus acculturation to Hellenism, led to a more positive Jewish interpretation of the Alexander legacy.
In its most neutral form this was typified by having Alexander show deference to either the Jewish people or the symbols of their faith. In having the great conqueror thus acknowledge the essential truth of the Jews' religious, intellectual, or ethical traditions, the prestige of Alexander was harnessed to the cause of Jewish ethnocentrism. Eventually Jewish writers would almost completely co-opt Alexander, depicting him as a righteous gentile or even a believing monotheist.
Christian legends
The Christianized peoples of the Near East, inheritors of both the Hellenic as well as Judaic strands of the Alexander Romance, further embellished the Alexander legend until in some stories he was depicted as a near-saint, a monotheist Believing King (contrary to known historical facts).
The two-horned one
 Silver tetradrachm (ancient Greek coin) issued in the name of Alexander the Great, depicting Alexander with the horns of Amon (242/241 BC, posthumous issue) |
 Imitation silver tetradrachm issued in the name of the Arab chieftain Abi’el, minted at the site of Mleiha in southeastern Arabia around 200 BC. This coin is an imitation based on coin types of Alexander the Great |
The Arabic name "Dhul-Qarnayn" literally means "the two-horned one." Alexander the Great was often depicted with the horns of Amon. The coins pictured above show a horned Alexander. One of the coins was minted in 2nd century Arabia, showing that the legend was current there long before Muhammad.
Alexander was shown with horns because he was identified with the Egyptian horned god Amon. The rulers of Egypt had long based their claims to legitimacy upon divine descent. Alexander, as the conqueror of Egypt, had advanced a competing claim, that he was the son of Amon and thereby entitled to rule.
"He seems to have become convinced of the reality of his own divinity and to have required its acceptance by others ... The cities perforce complied, but often ironically: the Spartan decree read, 'Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god.'" [7] In the Alexander Romance, a Christian legend has it that, in one of his prayers to God, Alexander said, "O God ... Thou hast made me horns upon my heads" and the translator adds in a footnote that in the Ethiopic version of this legend, "Alexander is always referred to as 'the two horned,'" [8] (p.146.)
The Caspian Gates
The Alexander Romance includes the Christian legend of the Caspian Gates, also known as Alexander's wall, built by Alexander to fence off the barbaric hordes of Gog and Magog. Several variations of this legend can be found. In the legend, Alexander the Great builds a gate of iron between two mountains to prevent the armies of Gog and Magog from attacking. This is precisely the story that the Qur'an tells of Dhul-Qarnayn.
One academic notes, "The episode of the building of the gate against Gog and Magog is found in the Christian legend concerning Alexander, and in the poetic version of Jacob of Serugh which was written not later than A.D. 521. The Koran was written over a century after this version." [9] (p. 201).
A version of the Christian legend gives a supposed letter from Alexander to his mother:
- "I petitioned the exalted Deity, and he heard my prayer. And the exalted Deity commanded the two mountains and they moved and approached each other to a distance of twelve ells, and there I made .... copper gates 12 ells broad, and 60 ells high, and smeared them over within and without with ... so that neither fire nor iron, nor any other means should be able to loosen the copper; since fire was put out against it, and iron was shattered. Within these gates, I made another construction of stones, each of which was eleven ells broad, 20 ells high, and 60 ells thick. And having done this I finished the construction by putting mixed tin and lead over the stones, and smearing .... over the whole, so that no one might be able to do anything against the gates. I called them the Caspian Gates. Twenty and Two Kings did I shut up therein." [10](pp.177-178).
When Alexander's Gate was accepted as history, then it seemed reasonable that historians and geographers should note its real-life location. Various accounts were current. One historian notes,
- "The gate itself had wandered from the Caspian Gates to the pass of Dariel, from the pass of Dariel to the pass of Derbend, as well as to the far north; nay, it had travelled even as far as remote eastern or north-eastern Asia, gathering in strength and increasing in size as it went, and actually carrying the mountains of Caspia with it. Then, as the full light of modern day come on, the Alexander Romance ceased to be regarded as history, and with it Alexander's Gate passed into the realm of fairyland." [11] (pp.103-104).
Gog and Magog
In the Christian legends, Alexander the Great builds a mighty wall and gate between two mountains, preventing the hordes of Gog and Magog from invading the Earth. In the Qur'an, Dhul-Qarnayn builds a mighty wall and gate between two mountains, preventing the hordes of Gog and Magog from invading the Earth.
Christian legend has it that in the end times, before the Judgement Day, the wall and gate will be destroyed and the barbarians will overwhelm the civilized world. The Qur'an also says that this will happen.
:"...Until the Gog and Magog (people) are let through (the gate), and they swiftly swarm from every hill. Then will the True Promise draw nigh (of fulfilment). Then behold! The eyes of the Unbelievers will fixedly stare in horror ..." (Qur'an 21:96-97)
The ends of the earth
The Qur'anic account describes Alexander travelling to the "rising of the sun", and finding a people there who were not shielded from it:
- "Then he [Dhul-Qarnayn] followed a way until, when he reached the rising of the Sun, he found it rising upon a people for whom We had not appointed any veil to shade them from it ... " (Qur'an 18:89-90).
The account of Pseudo-Callisthenes likewise describes Alexander as doing so, and finding such a people: " The place of his [the Sun's] rising is over the sea, and the people who dwell there, when he is about to rise, flee away and hide themselves in the sea, that they be not burnt by his rays... So the whole camp mounted, and Alexander and his troops went up between the fetid sea and the bright sea to the place where the Sun enters the window of heaven."^
Muslim veneration of Dhul-Qarnayn
Early Muslim scholars identified the Dhul-Qarnayn of the Qur'an with Alexander the Great. In the following centuries, Dhul-Qarnayn was often (if not always) regarded by Muslims as a Prophet of Islam.
The Persian Alexander legend is known as the Iskandarnamah. Persian writers told stories in which Alexander's mother was a wife or concubine of Darius II, making him the half-brother of the last Achaemenid shah, Darius III. Muslim writers wove these legends into their meditations upon Dhul-Qarnayn.
By the 12th century writers such as Nezami Ganjavi were writing epic poems about Alexander, holding him up as the model of the ideal statesman or philosopher-king.
Reasons against Alexander as Dhul-Qarnayn
Some argue that we know nothing of Dhul-Qarnayn save what is found in the Qur'an, and that not enough information is there given to link Dhul-Qarnayn and Alexander -- or indeed any historical figure. [3] Others argue that the reasoning behind the Alexander theory of Dhul-Qarnayn is political in nature, as supporters of this theory such as Avicenna, Farabi, and Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi[1] were proponents of the Aristotelian school of thought.
Many simply asserted that Alexander could not have been Dhul-Qarnayn simply because the latter was a prophet of God, or had prophet-like qualities, while Alexander "would quarrel and argue (امر و نهی) with his instructor Aristotle, exhbiting un-Nabi-like characteristics" according to the famous scholar Imam Fakhruddin Razi.
At any rate, the identity of Dhul-Qarnayn has become a matter of great controversy in modern times.
Most medieval scholars of Islam identified Dhul-Qarnayn as the ancient Greek conqueror Alexander the Great, although some South Arabian interpreters identified him with the early South Arabian ruler Tubba' al-Aqran, about whom similar tales were told[6]. The early Muslim historian Ibn Hisham wrote,
:"Dhu al-Qarnain is Alexander the Greek, the king of Persia and Greece, or the king of the east and the west, for because of this he was called Dhul-Qarnayn [meaning, 'the two-horned one']..."
Some modern Islamic scholars also identify Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander the Great; for example, in the appendix of his famous translation of the Qur'an, Yusuf Ali argues for such an identification. Orientalist academics have generally agreed with this identification, noting similarities between medieval tales of Alexander's exploits and the acts of Dhul-Qarnayn as recounted in the Qur'an.
If the Quranic references to Dhul-Qarnayn are to be construed as references to Alexander the Great, however, then those references are clearly folklore rather than history. Alexander the Great is not known to have built such a wall. Moreover, Dhul-Qarnayn is described as serving God, and has even been revered by some Muslims as a prophet, a character considered incompatible with the pagan and homosexual Alexander described by the oldest Greek histories.
Current Muslim orthodoxy posits the Qur'an is perfect and infallible, and thus that the earlier interpreters must have erred in identifying Dhul-Qarnayn with Alexander. The correct identification of Dhul-Qarnayn, in this view, is uncertain, although several suggestions have been advanced. Non-Muslim scholars explain the Qur'an's account as reflecting what was believed to be true of Alexander in 7th century Arabia, not actual historical fact (see also higher criticism.) Comparable issues of historicity arise frequently in the interpretation of the Qur'an (and indeed other texts); the Qur'anic (and Biblical) descriptions of the events surrounding the Exodus with such points as the existence of Moses or the drowning of Pharaoh's army unattested in surviving historical records - is a well-known example.
