At The World's Edges: Dhul Qarnayn's Conquests and the Containment of Yajuj and Majuj (Stories of the Prophets) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

At the World's Edges: Dhū al-Qarnayn's Conquests

Sixteen verses in Sūrat al-Kahf tell the story of a man who crossed the world twice, ruled at both ends of it, and built a wall that is still standing.

The Qurʾān does not give us his proper name, beyond a title. It does not say what century he lived in, what country he came from, or where he built the wall. Scholars have argued about all three for fourteen hundred years without settling any of them.

This book takes the silence as deliberate. What the account does give — in detail, and repeatedly — is how the man behaved. He was handed the disposal of a whole people and chose to call them rather than punish them. He was offered payment for one of the greatest construction projects in history and refused it, asking for their labor instead. And when the work was finished, he named it a mercy from his Lord and told them plainly that it would one day come down.

Drawn from more than two hundred works of tafsīr, ḥadīth, history and Islamic political thought — from al-Ṭabarī and al-Baghawī to Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Biqāʿī and al-Saʿdī — this volume follows the passage verse by verse. It sets out what the commentators established, marks clearly where they disagreed, and declines to fill in what Allah left out.

Along the way, it takes up the questions readers actually ask. Was he a prophet? Was he Alexander? Where is the barrier, and why has no one found it? Who are Yaʾjūj and Maʾjūj, and what do the sound reports actually say about them?

This supplementary volume is in the Stories of the Prophets series, between the stories of Ibrāhīm and Yūsuf.

A work of classical Sunnī research rendered in plain English for a general readership, with the Arabic sources quoted and fully referenced.

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