Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī reported, on the authority of al-Thawrī: “It has reached us that Dhu l-Qarnayn was the first person ever to greet by shaking hands” (1).
It is related from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār that he said to Muʿāwiyah: “When death approached Dhu l-Qarnayn, he instructed his mother that, once he had died, she should prepare a meal, gather the women of the town, place the food before them, and permit them to eat—except any woman who had lost a child; she was not to partake of it. When she carried this out, not one of the women put her hand to the food. She asked, ‘Glory be to Allah! Are all of you bereaved?’ They answered, ‘Yes, by Allah, there is not one among us (but that she has lost a child; and that served to console his mother)’ (2).
Ishāq ibn Bishr narrated, through ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ziyād, from certain People of the Scripture, the testament of Dhu l-Qarnayn and his lengthy, eloquent admonition to his mother—replete with wisdom and beneficial counsel—and that he died at the age of three thousand years. This report is strange.
Ibn ʿAsākir (3) said: “I have received through another chain that he lived thirty-six years. (It is also said that he lived thirty-two years and that he appeared seven hundred and forty years after David) (4). He was five thousand one hundred and eighty-one years after Adam, and his reign lasted sixteen years (5).”
What he has mentioned applies only to the second Alexander, not the first. He has confused them at the beginning and end of the entry, whereas the correct approach—as we and a number of leading scholars have stated—is to distinguish between them. Allah knows best.
Among those who regarded them as one and the same was Imām ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām, the transmitter of the Sīrah (6). Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim al-Suhaylī (7)—may Allah have mercy on him—vigorously rejected this view, refuted it in strong terms, and clearly differentiated the two, as we have noted. He said: “It may be that several early kings adopted the name Dhu l-Qarnayn in emulation of the first.” Allah knows best.