Sounds really good and interesting! Maybe it's worth mentioning roughly when the Abbasid era was for those who don't know. Looking forward to the series!
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I guess you already have loads of stuff you want to include, but here's a couple of my favourites that might be useful. Feel free to completely ignore!
Verse 5:32 derived from a Rabbinical comment in Talmud on the same story (Cain's murder of Abel)This explains it well. Note it's also in the Jerusalem Talmud,
Sanhedrin 4/5Pre-Islamic and contemporary poetry that features the Dhu'l Qarnayn story from 18:83-101al-Tabari quotes some verse by a Yemeni king, Tubba’:
"Dhu al-Qarnayn before me submitted himself [to God], a king to whom the other kings became humble and thronged [his court]. He reigned over the Eastern and Western lands, yet sought the means of knowledge from a wise, rightly guided scholar. He witnessed the setting of the sun in its resting place into a pool of black and foetid slime."
Al-Tabari, History of al-Tabari, Volume 5 – The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, trans. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, pp. 173-174, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999
Same poem is in Ibn Ishaq
Guillaume, A., The Life of Muhammad, p. 12 London: Oxford University Press, 1955
Stories influenced by the Alexander legends were manifested in Arabic poetry shortly before and during the time of Muhammad. As Richard Stoneman says,
“the poet Imru’ l-Qays (Diwan 158) referred to a Yemeni hero who undertook a similar campaign against Gog and Magog. […] In addition, the pre-Islamic poet al-’Asha and the contemporary of Muhammad Hassan ibn Thabit both composed verses referring to the conquest of Gog and Magog and the furthest east by Dhu ’l-Qarnayn.”
Stoneman, R., “Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition”, In The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Eds. S. Panayotakis et al., pp. 7-8, Boston, USA: Brill Academic Publishers 2003
You can read it in the
google books previewThose lines by Imru’ l-Qays (died c. 540 CE) are these:
Have I not told you that destiny slays by guile,
A slayer most treacherous indeed, it consumes men’s sons.It banished Dhū Riyāsh from lordly citadels,
When he had ruled the lowlands and the mountains.
He was a valiant king; by revelation he sundered the horizons.
He drove his vanguards to their eastern edges,
And, where the sun climbs, barred the hills to Gog and Magog.
Imru’ l-Qays, Diwan 158 quoted in Norris, H. T. (transl.), “Fables and Legends” In The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres, Eds. J. Ashtiany et al., p. 138-139, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990
You can see it in the
google books prevewThe lines composed by Hāssan b. Thābit, a poet who for a time was employed by Muhammad himself, appropriate elements of the Alexander Legend to a king in the line of Himyar (called Tubba‘ by the Muslims):
Ours the realm of Dhu ’l-Qarnayn the glorious,
Realm like his was never won by mortal king.
Followed he the sun to view its setting
When it sank into the sombre ocean-spring;
Up he clomb to see it rise at morning,
From within its mansion when the East it fired;
All day long the horizons led him onward,
All night through he watched the stars and never tired.
Then of iron and of liquid metal
He prepared a rampart not to be o’erpassed,
Gog and Magog there he threw in prison
Till on Judgement Day they shall awake at last
Hāssan b. Thābit quoted in R. A. Nicholson (transl.), A Literary History of the Arabs, p. 18, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1907
You can read it here in the
google books previewAs we can see, a literal setting in a spring is mentioned (in the Arabic those lines are literally, “he followed the sun nearby its sunset to observe it in its spring while lowly”).
The Arabic text which Nicholson translates is from
Von Kremer, Alfred, Altarabische Gedichte uber die Volkssage von Jemen, als Textbelege zur Abhandlung “Ueber die sudarabische Sage.”, pp.15-16, VIII, lines 6-11, 1867
It can be read online in the
google books previewor
hereMuch more detail can be found in the
Alexander Legend. It has been known since 1890 thanks to Theodore Nöldeke that there is a very close similarity between the account in the Qur’an of Dhu’l Qarnayn and the Alexander Legend. This was written in Syriac, probably around 630 CE, but incorporates older traditions such as that of the iron gate built by Alexander dating to at least the time of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the 1st century CE* and journeys to the rising and setting place of the sun from the Epic of Gilgamesh.**
It is part of a larger collection of legends about Alexander the Great known as the Alexander Romance. The Alexander Legend begins with Alexander expressing his desire to explore the ends of the Earth. It then has Alexander saying that God has given him horns on his head and he asks for power over other kingdoms. After collecting seven thousand iron and brass workers from Egypt, he goes to the fetid sea at the end of the Earth. He makes some evildoers go to the shore of the fetid sea, and they die. He and his men go to the window of heaven into which the sun sets between the fetid sea and a bright sea (although it does not say that the sun actually sets into this sea). The place where the sun rises is over the sea and the people who live there must flee from it and hide in the sea. The story then describes how Alexander*** prostrates before God and travels through the heavens at night to the place where the sun rises. He then visits some mountains and the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Next it has Alexander coming to some people who tell him about the Huns within the Northern mountains (Gog, Magog and other kings are listed). He offers to build an iron and brass gate to close up the breach between the mountains, does so and prophesises that God will destroy the gate at the end of the world and the Huns will go forth through it. Next there is a battle with the Persians and their allies after they were told of his gate. It then ends with Alexander worshiping in Jerusalem and his death in Alexandria.****
Kevin Van Bladel sums up the correspondence with the Qur’an passage in his recent article:
Thus, quite strikingly, almost every element of this short Qur’anic tale finds a more explicit and detailed counterpart in the Syriac Alexander Legend. In both texts the specific events are given in precisely the same order. Already earlier several cases of specific words that are exact matches between the Syriac and the Arabic were indicated. The water at the place where the sun sets is “fetid” in both texts, a perfect coincidence of two uncommon synonyms (Syraic Saryâ and Arabic hami’a).*****
* See Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book VII, Chapter VII, Verse 4. See endnote 88
here for a little more info.
**See Epic of Gilgamesh,
Tablet IX and
Tablet I***Alexander, not the sun, as was incorrectly translated by A. W. Budge according to Van Bladel (Van Bladel, Kevin, "The Alexander legend in the Qur‘an 18:83-102", In The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context, Ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds, p.198, note 12, New York: Routledge)
Most of his paper is previewable on google books though I've read the whole thing.
****A. W. Budge (trans.), “A Christian Legend Concerning Alexander” in The History Of Alexander The Great Being The Syriac Version Of The Pseudo-Callisthenes, pp. 144-158, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889
Most of the translation of the Syriac version and the much of the rest of the book can be
previewed online.
and the translation is also quoted in full
here*****Van Bladel 2007 op. cit. p181
Topic: The Origins of the Qur'an - Introduction Script