Subtleties and Allusions

1) The Influence of Dhū al-Qarnayn on Culture and Thought

According to Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (Maḥmūd ibn Masʿūd Kāzarūnī), commentator on Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq, Aristotle is the author of logic, and logic is the legacy of Dhū al-Qarnayn. He gave Aristotle five hundred thousand dinars (as an author’s fee) and paid him one hundred and twenty thousand dinars every year.(31) From this perspective, Dhū al-Qarnayn left his mark both on the expanse of the earth and on the expanse of culture and thought. Later, in a verse by Ḥakīm Sabzawārī (r.a.), we find:

The sage Aristotle composed it – the legacy of the holy Dhū al-Qarnayn.(32)

2) The Need to Research How Dhū al-Qarnayn Travelled

One beneficial question is how Dhū al-Qarnayn travelled from the West to the East: did he return by the way he had gone, or did he continue on his way through the northern regions – which are safe from sea travel – until he reached the East? Majmaʿ al-Bayān raises the question of the earth’s sphericity and writes: “‘Then he followed a way’ means: then he followed a route reaching that which would bring him to one of the regions of the earth; and this strengthens the view of those who say that the earth is spherical, because he did not take the road by which he had come back, but took another road.”(33) In any case, examining how Dhū al-Qarnayn travelled – first to the West, second to the East, and third to the region of the barrier of Gog and Magog – bears on understanding the verses “then he followed a way”, which is mentioned three times: was it a journey around the globe, or of some other kind?

3) Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī’s Report on Dhū al-Qarnayn

According to historians such as Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī, “Dhū al-Qarnayn” was from the people of Ḥimyar in Yemen. The prefixes Dhī, Dhā and Dhū were common in that tribe; the word Dhū appears in names such as Dhū al-Aʿādhir and Dhū Nuwās; and the poets of Yemen, in some of their odes, claimed Dhū al-Qarnayn as their own.(34)

On this view, Dhū al-Qarnayn was not from the West or the East, but from the Middle East. For according to the apparent meaning of the Qur’an, he travelled to the West and the East and was known as Dhū al-Qarnayn; the word Dhū al-Qarnayn occurs three times in this surah(35); the people of those regions also called him “Dhū al-Qarnayn”; and this title belongs to the Arab-inhabited lands and the like, and is not a translation of it. It seems that this word itself was the person’s name, and that he was known by this very name.