Since Dhu ‘l-Qarnayn had the means to do everything, and on three different occasions the Qur’an says “he traveled on”, the suggestion is he covered a vast distance in his travels. The starting point of Dhu 'l-Qarnayn’s journey is not stated in the Qur'an, nor do I think it is relevant. What is relevant are the three ‘pit stops’ he made along the way.
On the first pit stop he saw ‘the sun setting into a muddy spring’. I believe this to be the Hwang Ho river – China’s second largest river. The Hwang Ho is ranked as the muddiest river in the world. So muddy in fact, that it is better known as the Yellow River due to its discolouration from all the silt it carries. The Hwang Ho is also extremely prone to flooding. So much so that some estimates put the number of floods at about 16,000 in the last 3000 to 4,000 years. Each time the Hwang Ho floods, indeed it must look like a muddy spring.
Hwang Ho (Yellow River)
On the second pit stop he found a people who ‘had no shelter from the rising sun’. Where do people have no shelter from the sun? Why a desert of course. I believe the Qur’anic verse is referring to the Gobi desert which is the largest desert in Asia covering parts of northwestern China and southern Mongolia. If Dhu 'l-Qarnayn was coming from the southwest, he pretty much had to cross the Hwang Ho river to get to the Gobi desert.
Gobi Desert
On the third pit stop he reached ‘a place between two mountain barriers and beside them a people who could barely understand him’. I believe the people beside the two mountains were the Chinese and the two mountain barriers are any of a number of mountain ranges that form along the present day China-North Korea border. After all, I think it’s a safe bet Dhu’l-Qarnayn didn’t speak much Chinese - and if he did speak Chinese it certainly would have been a very different dialect than that spoken in Manchuria (which borders with North Korea) - and geographically this all adds up since you have to travel east through the Gobi desert to arrive at the doorstep of North Korea.
Korean Peninsula
The people said ‘Gog and Magog are ruining this land’. If Gog and Magog are ruining the land, the implication is they are constantly at war with each other. Both the Chinese and the Korean civilizations date back to well over 5,000 BC and war has been a mainstay of the area. To be even more specific, circa 100 BC:
"to the northeast of the Chinese commandery of Lelang, along the middle reaches of the Yalu River, lies the territory of the Goguryô (i.e. Gog), a warlike tribal people who pose a recurrent threat to Lelang".
Ref link: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/04/eak/ht04eak.htm
The people further requested, ‘Will you put up a barrier between them and us?’ Dhu’ l-Qarnayn replied ‘if you lend me your strength, I will put up a fortification between you and them’. The most obvious type of fortification or barrier is a wall. Korea ‘developed from a federation of walled cities into a centralized kingdom sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries BC.’ (Ref link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea). And of course the Chinese are well known for wall building, i.e. the Great Wall of China. So wall or barrier building seems to be an integral part of the military defense strategy of the two civilizations.
Dhu ‘l-Qarnayn further requested ‘iron to fill the gap between two mountain sides’ so that their enemies could not ‘scale the barrier or pierce it’. The iron age in Korea is dated at 400-60BC and China at 600-200BC, although there is evidence of ironwork in the region as early as 1200 BC. This supports the verse above. Interestingly enough, "there is a record that one of the ancient states, Pyonhan located around Kimhae of the present country (the Koreas), exported a great quantity of iron to Nakrang, an ancient country that existed in the Manchuria area and Japan." (Ref link: http://park.org/Korea/Pavilions/PublicPavilions/Public/nsm/eg/pe-3.html).
Ancient Kingdom of Goguryeo (Gog)
The ancient kingdom of Korea is known as ‘Goguryeo’ (Ref Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea). Notice the first three letters spell ‘Gog’. One meaning of Magog is 'from' or 'of' Gog. And indeed North and South Koreans are 'from' and 'of ' each other. If you placed a map of the ancient Kingdom of Goguryeo against a map of current day North Korea, we can see it is approximately the same geographical boundaries; this inspite of over 2,000 years passing by! It is also readily evident how mountainous the Korean peninsula is:
Topographical Map of Korean Peninsula
The Qur’an states “when the people of Gog and Magog are let loose and swarm swifty from every highland”...“On that Day we shall let them surge against each other like waves”. North and South Korea is 70% mountains, i.e. they are basically highlands. The present size of the North Korean army is 1.2 million – the 5th largest standing army in the world - this in a country whose entire population is only 23 million. Could you imagine if Canada - which has more people than North Korea - had an army of 1 million! But that's not all. The South Korean army is 670,000 strong. Between the two of them, there are 2 million soldiers - and that's not including reservists who can be called upon at any time - all in in a relatively small and isolated geographical peninsula. If there was a war, they literally would surge against each other in waves, just as the Qur'an describes.
And if that happened, the decisive verse “and then the Trumpet will be blown and We shall gather them all together”...well you know what that means...it will be the Day of Judgement - the Day God has promised all along, and God does not break His promise.
Considering the verbal escalation happening right now, and what seems to be a growing isolation of North Korea even from its traditional allies, China and Russia, my personal view is that Kim Jong-il is not posturing - he really does mean what he says and we do have a very serious cause to be alarmed. In fact, it doesn't get any more serious than this.
But if it is written, it is written…there’s not a whole lot you and I can do about it.
To be continued...in part II.
Peace. Imran.
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