"Dhu al-Qarnayn dug thirty cubits down his foundation, built it with iron and copper until his leg to the face of the earth, then he lifted two jambs (the jamb is like a wall or a vertical threshold upwards) following the mountain from the sides of the dawn. The width of each jamb is twenty-five cubits (14 meters), by the thickness of fifty cubits (27 meters), and all of it is built with milk (like a brick or stone) of iron hidden (melted) in copper, the brick (brick) shall be one and a half cubits in one and a half cubits (the length of the stone or brick is approximately one and a half meters) in thickness (width) four fingers."
(Description of Salam al-Turjuman for Dhul-Qarnayn Dam)
Due to the mention of the people of "Gog and Magog" to the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet, they have in the history of the world in the past and in the future an inseparable link from it, it came from the dam of Gog and Magog in Surat Al-Kahf: (Even if it reached between the two dams and found without them people hardly understand the words (93) They said, O Dhul-Qarnayn that Gog and Magog corrupt in the earth, so do we make you out to make between us and them a dam (94) He said what enabled me in which my Lord is good Therefore help me with strength to make a bridge between you and them."
Dhul-Qarnayn was able to build this dam or backfill between the two large mountains through an engineering plan explained by the Holy Qur'an, as he melted over that backfill a mixture of iron and copper, to be stronger, and more compact, until God said in it: (They could not show it and what they could for him as a niqab), that is, they could not rise above to its height and smoothness, and they could not dig it to get out of it.
The Mother of the Believers, Sayyida Zaynab bint Jahsh (may Allah be pleased with her), narrated that the Prophet (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) entered upon her in dismay, saying: "Woe to the Arabs from an evil that has approached. He shaved his thumb and the next." The hadith is narrated by Imam al-Bukhari and Muslim in their Sahihs[1]. Moreover, one of the signs of the great resurrection is the departure of Gog and Magog so that humanity cannot with all its strength to repel them and repel them.
From these Quranic verses and hadiths of the Prophet became interest in the people of Gog and Magog and Dhul-Qarnayn dam is something that has 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 to that dam to find out his news after a terrifying vision he saw in his dream. So how was the journey of the translator's peace to the dam of Gog and Magog? And how did he meet the horrors and difficulties on the way one thousand and two hundred years ago? And what did he see in that dam? Was Salam al-Turjuman's journey preceded by other trips? That's what we'll see in our next story.
Previous attempts on a peace journey
It says in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "Gog and Magog dig the dam every day, even if they can almost see the rays of the sun. Go back, and you will dig it tomorrow, hopefully, and it is excluded, and they will return to it as it looked when they left it, and they dig it and go out on the people, and they dry the water, and the people will barricade themselves from them in their fortresses, and they will throw their arrows to heaven, and it will return with it like blood, and they will say: We have conquered the people of the earth, and exalted the people of heaven, and God will send them a nap in their locks and kill them with it," and he said. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "The soul of Muhammad in his hand, the animals of the earth are fattening and giving thanks for their flesh and blood"[2].
These are the totality of the narrations of Islamic origins from the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet that highlighted to us the people of Gog and Magog, but the following facts on the death of the Messenger of Allah (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) 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 - may Allah be pleased with him - and during the Muslim conquest of Azerbaijan in the year 22 AH, the owner of Azerbaijan, Shahrbaraz, told the Muslim conqueror Abdul Rahman bin Rabia about the dam by saying:
"He said, 'Prince, do you know where this man came from?' I sent this man years ago towards the dam to see what he was doing and without him, and provided him with great money, and wrote to him to those who follow me, and gave him a gift, and asked him to write to him to those behind him, and provided him with every king as a gift, and he did so with every king between him and him, until he ended up with him... When we finished, then there were two mountains between them a blocked dam, until it rose on the two mountains after it had leveled them, and if the dam was below a trench darker than the night after it"[3].
The reason for the trip and departure
But in the era of the Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Wathiq, who ruled the Islamic world between the years 227-232 AH, and while he was sleeping in one of his nights, he saw in his dream that the dam of Gog and Magog is open, so he was very frightened, and ordered to prepare 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, the truth of his vision, and he told him that a man working in the Abbasid administration in the translation department whose name is Salam Al-Turjuman knows thirty languages, Salam Al-Turjuman says about those moments: "He called me Al-Wathiq, and said: I want you to go out to the dam so that you can see it and bring me his news. And included me fifty strong young men, and reached me (gave me) five thousand dinars, and gave me Diti (if I die on the way) ten thousand dirhams, and ordered and gave each man of the fifty thousand dirhams and livelihood (salary) year"[4] as quoted Obaidullah bin Khordadbeh (d. 280 AH) in his book "Paths and Kingdoms", has heard the whole story of Salam al-Turjuman is our main source of it.
The exploratory convoy was equipped with passengers, food and food, and they came out of the capital of the Abbasids at the time, "Samarra" towards the north, so they became towards Armenia and was part of the Abbasid Islamic state and its capital is Tiflis (Tbilis), the capital of Georgia today, when the peace mission arrived Al-Turjuman wrote the governor of Armenia Ishaq bin Ismail letters to the kings of the Caucasus and southern Russia, the most important of which at the time was the Jewish Kingdom of the Khazars.
Salam says: "So we stayed with the king of the Khazars for a day and a night until he brought with us five guides (guides), and we walked from him [towards the east of the northern Caspian Sea] twenty-six days, and we ended up in a black and stinking land... We walked there for ten days, then we went to the cities of ruins, we walked there for twenty days, and he asked us about the condition of those cities, and he told us that they were the cities that Gog and Magog were talking about, and they destroyed them"[5].
The Russian orientalist and scholar Ignatiusz Krachkovsky asserts in his book "History of Arabic Geographical Literature" that the peace of the translator did indeed reach Lake Belkash, a lake located today in Kazakhstan, and even managed to reach the region of Jangaria in China today, and that he may have seen the Great Wall of China[6].
Peace in front of the dam!
Salam al-Turjuman confirms that his mission was able to reach a city called "Ayka... It has farms... It is the one that Dhul-Qarnayn used to bring down with his military, between it and the dam for three days... Until you come to the dam on the third day, which is a round mountain in which they mentioned Gog and Magog are two kinds... The dam built by Dhul-Qarnayn is a bridge between two mountains two hundred cubits wide (about 120 meters), and it is the road from which they come out and disperse in the ground"[7].
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 orally from him, and it was narrated by Ibn Khordadha, a geographer and one of the senior officials in the Abbasid Diwan.
Many European researchers have praised this trip and the important and accurate observations made by Salam, who says of the dam: "Dhul-Qarnayn dug its foundation thirty cubits down, and built it with iron and copper until its leg to the face of the earth, and then raised two jambs (the jamb is like a wall or vertical threshold up) following the mountain from the sides of the dawn. The width of each jamb is twenty-five cubits (14 meters), in the thickness of fifty cubits (27 meters), and the whole building with milk (as a brick or stone) of iron hidden (melted) in copper, the brick (brick) is one and a half cubits in one and a half cubits (the length of the stone or brick is approximately one and a half meters) in thickness (width) four fingers"[8].
Salam confirms that Dhul-Qarnayn was able to build the backfill just like the door, backfilling stones made of iron and copper, and then on top of that iron and molten copper so that "no wind enters from the door or from the mountain, as if he created his creation" as he describes; Rather, Salam al-Turjuman asserts that this 120-cubit high door or backfill, or approximately 55 meters, had a lock 25 cubits high, or 11 and a half meters, "not embraced by two men" as Salam describes, and we do not know whether it is really a lock on the door-like building, or is it more tighter and stronger for the body of the dam or backfill from the outside.
Salam asks the inhabitants of that area, whose king had appointed keepers of three men with a hammer, who knocked every day three knockers on this great building: "The lock strikes a blow at the beginning of the day, and he hears them (i.e. from behind the backfill or dam) a noise (loud sounds) like the core of wasps and then they are extinguished, and if at noon he strikes him another blow and listens with his ear to the door, then their shouting will be more severe than the first and then they will be extinguished, and if it is the time of the afternoon he will strike a blow Others are like that and then he sits down until sunset, and then he leaves. The purpose of knocking the lock is to hear from behind the door so that they know that there are keepers and these people know that there was no event in the door (the dam)"[9].
Salam al-Turjuman, the commander of the expedition, asked these keepers, 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 there is nothing in it except this crack. And the incision was crosswise like a fine thread. I said, "Do you fear anything for him?" They said, "No... I took out a knife from my hide, so I rubbed the place of the incision, so I took out half a dirham (of iron falling from it), and tightened it in a handkerchief to show him who trusts in God"[10].
Salam al-Tarjuman finished inspecting the body of the Dhul-Qarnayn Dam, and completed his mission to the fullest, and they decided to return from Central Asia apparently from his description towards Iraq, but the way back this time was not like the way to go, they headed towards Khorasan (Turkmenistan and the far east of Iran) until they passed the city of Samarkand, then Bukhara, then to Termez and then Nishapur, and "of the men who were with us and those who fell ill in going twenty-two men died, and those who died were buried in His clothes, and whoever fell ill we left sick in some villages. Fourteen men died in the marja' (recourse)"[11].
Salam decides that the duration of going to the dam was "in sixteen months, and we returned (to Iraq) in twelve months and days", meaning that the duration of the exploratory mission lasted two years and four months to go, explore and return, and when Salam arrived at the temporary Abbasid capital at the time, "Samarra", he says: "So I entered on the confident and told him the story, and I showed him the iron that I rubbed from the door, so he praised God (that the dam was not excavated and not demolished), and he ordered charity to be given in charity, and men gave every man a thousand Dinar"[12].
This is the journey of Salam al-Turjuman to the dam of Gog and Magog in the period between 227 AH to 232 AH, and the older Muslim geographers such as Ibn Rasta, Ibn al-Faqih and Yaqut al-Hamawi differed about its validity, as did Russian historians and orientalists who were interested in it because this mission had passed through the territory of the Russians, starting from the Caucasus and then a route from the northern Caspian Sea towards Central Asia and China, and whatever description of this trip, it is a unique scientific and geographical achievement that Muslims have already done. One thousand two hundred years ago.
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