Some People of the Book report that he lived for one thousand six hundred years, traversing the earth and calling its inhabitants to worship Allah alone with no partner. The accuracy of that span, however, remains open to scrutiny; Allah knows best.

Al-Bayhaqī and Ibn ʿAsākir have transmitted a very lengthy ḥadīth concerning the verse, “We endowed him with a means to everything” (Q 18:84). The report is exceedingly objectionable, and in its chain appears Muḥammad ibn Yūnus al-Kudaymī, who is accused (1); for that reason we have not reproduced it, deeming it unsound. Allah knows best.

As for the Almighty’s words, “So he followed a course” (Q 18:85)—that is, a route—“until, when he reached the setting-place of the sun” (Q 18:86), meaning the westernmost edge of the earth, he went as far as it is possible for anyone to go and halted at the shore of the encircling western ocean, known as Oceanus. Within it lie the islands called the “Islands of the Blessed,” which, according to one school among the astronomers, mark the prime meridian of longitude; according to another view, the prime meridian begins from the continental shore of that same sea, as we have noted earlier.

There he witnessed the sun’s disappearance, and—relative to his own perception—“it set in a spring of murky water” (Q 18:86). What is intended is the sea, for whoever is on or beside it sees the sun as though it rises from the water and sinks back into it. Hence the verse says, “he found it,” meaning as he perceived it, and does not say, “and behold, it was setting in a spring of mud”—that is, a spring filled with silt. Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (2) said that the phrase denotes black clay, while others read it as ḥāmiya (3), “scalding.” Some took this second reading to convey the same meaning as the first; others understood it to refer to intense heat produced by the sun’s blazing rays.

Imām Aḥmad (4) narrates—from Yazīd ibn Hārūn, from al-ʿAwām ibn Ḥawshab, who said: a client of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr related to me, from ʿAbd Allāh—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ looked at the sun when it had set and said, “It is in Allah’s blazing fire; were it not restrained by a command from Allah, it would burn whatever is upon the earth.” This report is unusual, includes an unnamed narrator, and its attribution to the Prophet is questionable; it may, in fact, be a statement of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr himself. On the day of Yarmūk he came across two saddlebags of earlier scriptures and would relate material from them (5). Allah knows best.

Thus, any storyteller who claims that Dhu l-Qarnayn went beyond the place where the sun sets and marched for long periods through realms of complete darkness is mistaken and has strayed far from the truth, asserting notions that contravene both sound reason and authentic revelation.