Khidr.12 Alexander the Greek lived approximately three hundred years before Christ, and was taught by Aristotle.13

Human history goes back in regular fashion approximately three thousand years. This  deficient and short view of history is not accurate concerning pre-Abrahamic times. It  continues back either as superstition, or as denial, or in very abbreviated form. The reason  the Dhu’l-Qarnayn of Yemen was since early times in Qur’anic commentaries known as Alexander,14 was either because it was one of his names and he was Alexander the Great or the Alexander of Ancient Times, or else the following:

The  particular  events  mentioned  in  Qur’anic  verses  are  the  tips  of universal events. Thus, through his prophetic guidance, Alexander the Great, who was Dhu’l- Qarnayn, built a barrier between some peoples, oppressors and oppressed, and built the famous Great Wall of China to prevent the raids of those cruel enemies. Similarly, many powerful kings and world conquerors like Alexander the Greek followed in the path of Dhu’l-Qarnayn materially, while the prophets and spiritual poles, who are the kings of man’s spiritual world, followed him in spiritual matters and guidance; they built  barriers between  mountains,  one of the most  effective means  of saving  the oppressed from oppressors,15  and later constructed strongholds on mountain peaks.

They  founded  these  themselves  through  their  material  power,  or  through  their guidance  and planning. Then they built walls surrounding towns and citadels inside the towns, and  finally they made machine-guns and Dreadnoughts, which were like mobile citadels. The most famous barrier on earth, the Great Wall of China, covers a distance of several days’  journeying and was built to halt the incursions against the oppressed peoples of India and  China of the savage tribes known in the Qur’an as Gog and Magog, and otherwise known as the Mongols and Manchurians. These tribes several times threw the world of humanity into  chaos. Pouring out from behind the Himalayas, they wrought destruction from east to west. A long wall was built between two mountains close to the Himalayan mountains which for a long time prevented the frequent assaults of those savage peoples, and barriers were also built  through the efforts of the kings of ancient Persia, who resembled Dhu’l- Qarnayn, in the mountains of Caucasia, in the region of Darband, to halt the inroads of the plundering and pillaging Tatar peoples.

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12 See, al-Qurtubi, al-Jami‘ li-Ahkam al-Qur’an, xi, 47.

13 See, Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari, vi, 382-3; al-Shawkani, al-Fath al-Qadir, iii, 307; al-Khamawi,

Mu‘jam al-Buldan, i, 184; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, ii, 17, 488.

14 See, al-Tabari, Jami‘ al-Bayan, xvi, 17; al-Qurtubi, al-Jami‘ li-Ahkam al-Qur’an, xi, 45; al- Shawkani, al-Fath al-Qadir, iii, 307; al-Alusi, Ruh al-Ma‘ani, xvi, 26.

15 There are numerous artificial barriers on the face of the earth that with the passing of time have taken on the appearance of mountains or have become unrecognizable.