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The wall Dhu al-Qarnayn 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 walls built in the Caspian Sea region against the northern barbarians, or ...
The Pseudo-Methodius (7th century [90]) is the first source in the Christian tradition for a new element: two mountains moving together to narrow the corridor, which was then sealed with a gate against Gog and Magog. This idea is also in the Quran (609–632 CE [91] [92]), and found its way in the Western Alexander Romance. [93]
Early Muslim scholars writing about Dhul-Qarnayn also associated Gog and Magog with the Khazars. Ibn Kathir (1301–1373 CE), the famous commentator of the Quran, identified Gog and Magog with the Khazars who lived between the Black and Caspian Sea in his work Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah (The Beginning and the End).
It is closely related to the Sīrat al-Iskandar, including in how both texts interpolate from the Syriac Alexander Legend, [3] such as in how it describes the construction of the Gates of Alexander designed to keep out and confine Gog and Magog. [4] The text identifies Gog and Magog with the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic ethnic group. [5]
A similar narration is mentioned in al-Kahf ("The Cave"), the 18th chapter of the Quran. According to the Quranic narrative, Gog and Magog (Arabic: يأجوج ومأجوج Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj) were walled off by Dhu al-Qarnayn ("possessor of the Two Horns"), a righteous ruler and conqueror who reached the west and the east. The barrier was ...
Interwoven later into this narrative in the Tales of the Prophets literature were episodes of an apparent Arab-Islamic elaboration: the construction of a great barrier to keep the people of Gog and Magog from harassing the people of the civilized world until Judgement Day, the voyage to the end of the Earth to witness the sun set in a pool of ...
The Gog and Magog material, which passed into a lost Arabic version, [26] and the Ethiopic and later Oriental versions of the Alexander Romance. [27] [c] It has also been found to closely resemble the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn in the Quran (see: Alexander the Great in the Quran).
In the Qissat al-Iskandar, Alexander the Great is depicted as a civilizing hero and monotheist [4] that travels across the world, builds the Wall against Gog and Magog, searches for the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth), and encounters angels who give him a "wonder-stone" that both weighs more than any other stone but is also as light as dust. [5]