(Dhu al-Qarnayn) dug its foundation thirty cubits down, and built it with iron and copper up to its leg to the face of the earth, then raised two jambs (a jamb like a wall or a vertical threshold up) following the mountain from the two sides of the dawn .. The width of each jamb is twenty-five cubits (14 meters) At a thickness of fifty cubits (27 meters), and all of it is a building with milk (like a brick or stone) of iron absent (melted) in copper, the brick (brick) is a cubit and a half in an arm and a half (the length of a stone or brick is approximately one and a half meters) in thickness ( Width) four fingers ".

(Description of Salam Al-Turjuman Dam)

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Dhul-Qarnain was able to build this dam or fill between the two large mountains through an engineering plan explained by the Noble Qur’an, as it smelted a mixture of iron and copper over that fill, to be stronger and more compact, until God said in it:

(So ​​they could not show it and they could not It has a niqab)

, meaning that they could not ascend the top to its height and smoothness, and they could not pierce it to get out of it.

The Mother of the Believers, Mrs. Zainab bint Jahsh - may God be pleased with her - reported that the Prophet - may God’s prayers and peace be upon him - entered her with fear, saying: “Woe to the Arabs from an evil that has approached, and the day was opened from the cliffs of Gog and Magog like these. And he flew with his thumb and the next to it.”

The hadith was narrated by the two Imams al-Bukhari and Muslim in their Sahih [1].

Moreover, one of the great signs of the Resurrection is the exodus of Gog and Magog, so that mankind will not be able with all its power to repel them.

From these Quranic verses and the hadiths of the Prophet, the interest in the Gog and Maguj and the Dhu al-Qarnayn dam became a matter of cognitive and cultural significance in the Islamic mind, and it seems that this issue was raised several times in the Umayyad and Abbasid eras, so that the Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Wathiq (d.232 AH) decided to send a mission headed by Salam al-Turjuman went to that dam to find out his experience after a terrifying vision he saw in his sleep.

How was the Turgoman's peace trip to the Gog and Magog Dam?

How did he encounter the horrors and difficulties on the road a thousand and two hundred years ago?

What did he see in that dam?

Was the Tarjuman peace trip preceded by other trips?

That's what we'll see in our next story.

According to the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal narrated from Abu Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him from the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, he said: "Gog and Magog to dig the dam every day, even if they almost see the sun beam, said that they: Turn Vsthvrunh tomorrow, comes and they're the strongest terms what it was, even if they reach their term, God wanted to Aboshm people, they dug, even if they almost see the sun beam, said that they: Turn Vsthvrunh tomorrow, God willing, and excludes, comes and they're to him and he Khaith when they left him, Faihvrunh and out on people, Vinschwon water, people barricaded them in their strongholds, Vermont to heaven Bsaamanm, Fterdja and the blood as a body, they say: the people of the land conquered, and Allona the people of heaven, God in them Ngfa also cause Oagafaihm Afiktlhm them, "said the Messenger of Allah r

May God be upon him and peace be upon him: “And by whom the soul of Muhammad is in his hand, the wheel of the earth shall fatten and give thanks for their meat.” 2

These are the entirety of the narrations of the Islamic origins from the book and the Prophet’s Sunnah that showed us the people of Gog and Magog, but the following facts about the death of the Messenger of God - may God bless him and grant him peace - made the story of Gog and Magog return to the surface of events from time to time, during the reign of Caliph Omar bin Al-Khattab-Razi God on Him - During the Muslim conquest of Azerbaijan in the year 22 AH, the owner of Azerbaijan told Shaharbraaz, the Muslim conqueror, Abd al-Rahman bin Rabi’a, about the dam, saying:

He said: O Prince, do you know where this man came from? This man I sent for years to the dam to see what he was and without him, and I provided him with great money, and I wrote to him to whomever I love, and I gave him, and I asked him to write for him to those behind him, and I provided him for every king A gift, so he did that to every king between him and him, until he ended it ... When we finished, there were two mountains between them, a dam, until he rose on the two mountains after they were leveled, and if the dam was without a trench that was darker than the night for its distance [3].

But during the era of the Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Wathiq, who ruled the Islamic world between 227-232 A.H., while he was sleeping one of his nights, he saw in his dream that the Gog and Magog Dam was open, so he was terrified, and he ordered the preparation of a scientific exploratory mission to investigate the truth of the matter!

The Caliph Al-Wathiq told the commander of the Abbasid army, Ashnas Al-Turki, of the truth of his visions. He told him that a man working in the Abbasid administration in the translation department in it, whose name was Salam Al-Tarjuman, knew thirty languages. Salaam al-Turjuman said about those moments: “So al-Wathiq called for me, and said: I want to go out to the dam until You inspect him and bring me his news. He joined fifty strong, young men to me, and he reached me (he gave me) five thousand dinars, and he gave me my debt (if I die on the road) ten thousand dirhams, and he commanded and gave each man of the fifty thousand dirhams and a yearly income. ”[4] Ubayd Allah bin Khardatheh (d.280 AH) in his book “Paths and Kingdoms”, and he heard the whole story from the peace of the translator, and he is our main source for it.

The expeditionary convoy was equipped with sticks, food, and food, and they left the Abbasid capital at the time, Samarra, towards the north, heading towards Armenia, and it was part of the Abbasid Islamic State and its capital is Tbilisi (Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia today. When the peace mission of the translators arrived, the governor of Armenia, Isaac bin Ismail, wrote letters to Kings of the Caucasus and southern Russia, the most important of which was the Jewish Kingdom of the Khazars at that time.

Peace says: “So we stayed with the king of the Khazars a day and a night until five guides (guides) brought with us, so we traveled from him [towards the east from the north of the Caspian Sea] for twenty-six days, and we ended up on a black land with a stench… So we explained there ten days, then we went to cities Ruin, we interpreted it for twenty days, so we asked about the state of those cities, and we were told that they were the cities that Gog and Magog used to touch, so they destroyed them "[5].

The Russian orientalist and scholar Ignatius Krachkovsky interrupts in his book "History of Arab Geographical Literature" that the peace of the translator did indeed reach Lake Belkash, a lake located today in Kazakhstan, but he was able to reach the Gangaria region in China today, and that he may have seen the Great Wall of China (6) ].

History of the Arab Geographical Literature by Ignatius Krachkovsky

Salam al-Turjuman confirms that his mission managed to reach a city called “Aika… there are farms… it was the one that Dhul-Qarnain used in his army, between it and the dam a three-day march ... until it comes to the dam on the third day, which is a round mountain in which they mentioned that Gog and Magog are two types. ... and the dam built by Dhu al-Qarnayn is a ditch (passage) between two mountains whose width is two hundred cubits (approximately 120 meters).

What is striking is that Salam was able to describe this dam accurately because he saw it as the opinion of the eye, and despite the doubts of some orientalists and European and Russian historians about the origin and truth of this trip, others confirmed its validity.

Because it was narrated from him orally, and it was narrated from him by Ibn Khardadhaba, the geographer and one of the senior officials in the Abbasid court.

Many European researchers praised this trip and the important and accurate notes mentioned by Salam, who says about the dam: “(Dhul Qarnain) excavated its foundation thirty cubits down, and built it with iron and copper until its leg to the face of the earth, then raised two jamb (jamb like a wall or a vertical threshold) Up (the mountain follows from the two sides of al-Fajj .. the width of each jamb is twenty-five cubits (14 meters), with a thickness of fifty cubits (27 meters), and it is all constructed in mud (as in the form of bricks or stones) of absent iron (dissolved) in copper, the brick forms) A brick) a cubit and a half by an arm and a half (the length of a stone or a brick is approximately one and a half meters) by a thickness (width) of four fingers "[8].

Salam affirms that Dhul-Qarnayn was able to build the filling just like the door, filling above stones made of iron and copper, then on top of that molten iron and copper so that “no wind comes from the door nor from the mountain as if his creation was created,” as he describes.

That is, as if this rubble that resembles a door has become like the two mountains located between them, which the seer thinks is a mountain just like them.

Rather, Salam al-Turjuman confirms that this door or the fill / dam, which is 120 cubits high, which is approximately 55 meters, had a lock of 25 cubits high, or 11 and a half meters high, "no two men embraced" as Salam describes it, and we do not know if it is a lock Indeed, on the building that resembles a door, or is it more tightening and strengthening the body of the dam or the backfill from the outside.

Salam asks the inhabitants of that region whose king had appointed three guardians of men with a hammer who used to knock every day three roads on this great building, “So the lock strikes a blow at the beginning of the day, and he hears them (that is, from behind the rubble or the dam) a noise (loud voices) such as Wasps roll and then they subside, and if at noon another blow strikes him and he listens with his ear to the door, then their (their shouting) will be more intense in the second than the first, then they subside, and if the time for afternoon strikes another blow, then they growl like that, then sit until sunset, then finish. He knocks the lock to hear from behind the door, so they know that there are guardians, and these people know that they did not cause an event in the door (the dam) [9].

Salam al-Turjuman, the leader of the expeditionary mission, asked these keepers, that is, the security men who maintain the dam and monitor the daily developments in it. He asked them about any defects they noticed in this dam, "They said," What is in it except this seam. The seam was as wide as a fine thread. So I said you feared something? " So they said: No ... so I drew a knife and rubbed the place of the crack, and took out half a dirham (of iron falling from it), and tightened it with a handkerchief to show him the one confident in God. ”[10]

Salam al-Turjuman finished inspecting the body of the Dhu al-Qarnayn dam and completed his mission in the fullest way, and they decided to return from Central Asia, apparently from what he described, towards Iraq, but the way back this time was not like the way to go, so they headed towards Khorasan (Turkmenistan and the far east of Iran) until They passed the city of Samarkand, then Bukhara, then to Tirmid and then Nishapur. “Twenty-two of the men who were with us died, and those of them were sick on the go, those who died were buried in their clothes, and whoever fell ill we left him sick in some villages. And he died in the reference (refer). Fourteen men "[11].

Salam states that the time to go to the dam was "in sixteen months, and we returned (to Iraq) in twelve months and days," meaning that the period of the exploration mission lasted two years and four months to go, explore and return, and when Salam arrived in the temporary capital of the Abbasids at the time, Samarra He says: “So I went in to al-Wathiq and told him the story, and I showed him the iron that I had rubbed through the door, so thank God (that the dam was not excavated and not demolished), and he ordered alms in charity, and the men gave each man a thousand dinars.” [12]

This is the journey of the peace of the translators to the dams of Gog and Magog in the period between 227 AH to 232 AH, and the earliest Muslim geographers such as Ibn Rasta, Ibn al-Faqih and Yaqout al-Hamwi differed about its validity, and the Russian historians and orientalists who were interested in it disagreed because this mission had passed through the lands of the Russians beginning with the Caucasus Then, by a route from the northern Caspian Sea towards central Asia and China, whatever the description of this journey is, it is considered a unique scientific and geographic achievement that the Muslims preceded one thousand two hundred years ago.



[1] Al-Bukhari hadith (3346).

[2] Musnad Ahmad, Hadith No. 10631.

[3] Al-Tabari’s History 4/159.

[4] Ibn Khordadhaba: Al-Masalik and Al-Mamlak, p. 163.

[5] Ibn Khordadaba: Previous, p. 163.

(6) Krachkovsky: A History of Geographical Literature 1/140.

[7] Ibn Khardathba: Previous, p. 165.

[8] Same former.

[9] Previous p. 167.

[10] Ibid, p. 168.

[11] Ibid, p. 169.

[12] Ibid, p. 170.