Description of the Wall.* — When the dominion, oppression and despotism of Yajûj and Majûj had endured for a long time, and the tongue of complaint was stretched out on account of their enmity and violence, Zulqarneen issued a mandate that the passages between the two mountains, through which the enemy used to enter, should be dug until water is reached. Then large rocks were placed for a foundation up to the level of the soil; after that the wall was built of pieces of iron, copper and lead, placing them upon each other like bricks. Fireplaces were so arranged as to heat the interstices into which the fire was blown until the whole melted together and became one compact mass. The work was continued in this manner until the top of the mountain had been reached, when the holes left in the walls by the scaffolding were filled in with molten copper and brass. The length of this wall is said to extend to a distance of one hundred and fifty Farsakhs; the breadth of it is fifty miles, and its height eight hundred cubits.* Muhammad Farghani [known in Europe as Alfaragius], the astronomer, and various learned men of later times, have denied this state­ment, and asserted it to be false; but as it is laid down in this manner in historical books, the author of this work considered it his duty to follow the ancients, and, by agree­ing more or less with them, has obstructed the way of con­tradiction.

In short, when the building was completed, Zulqarneen offered thanks to the Almighty, saying: ‘This is a mercy from my Lord; but when the prediction of my Lord shall come to be fulfilled, He shall reduce the wall to dust; and the prediction of my Lord is true.’ Then Zulqarneen jour­neyed to the farthest north, and arrived in a city the towers and ramparts of which were all of brass and copper, so polished that when the sun shone upon them the eyes of the beholder were dazzled by the glare. The gate of the city was closed, but Zulqarneen cunningly despatched a man up to the summit of the wall, who glanced at the city and towards the army of Zulqarneen, and, bursting into a laugh, descended on the other side without returning. In this manner several men went and entered the city, without its being known what had become of them.* Then Zul­qarneen turned away the reins of his intention from that region, and after traversing a great distance arrived in India, where he hastened to the south of the equinoctial line. After seeing the whole inhabited world, with its mountains and deserts, land and sea, cities and villages, cultivated and waste localities, he stopped at Eskandaria [Alexandria], where he founded the city of Makadûnia.

It is related in the A’jâyib-ullakhbâr that it took one hundred and fifty years to build the just-mentioned city, and that it was surrounded by a wall so polished that on account of its glare the inhabitants were forced to keep veils over their faces. In one corner of the town there was a tower six hundred cubits high, containing a talismanic speculum, in which an army coming from any quarter of the world could be perceived;* and the inhabitants were thus enabled to make timely preparations for defence. It is said that the city remained inhabited during one thou­sand five hundred years; after that it was in ruins during one thousand, and now it is in ruins for two thousand years, since Eskander the Greek had built a town there which still exists in the present—i.e. the eight hundredth and first—year of the Hegira (A.D. 1398).

When the greater Zulqarneen had conquered the whole inhabited world, fulfilled all his secular and religious enterprises, and seen all the marvels of the universe, he disbanded his army, became a hermit in the desert, and was entirely absorbed in the worship of his Creator, w. n. b. e. A short time afterwards he heard the invitation of the Lord of Glory, to which he responded, ‘I hear and obey, O Lord,’ departed from this perishable world, and surrendered his life to the requirements of fate.

Verses:

If the wheel of fortune bears thee even to its top, It will not spare thee in its turns; It is the same to friend or foe; Now it gives us the kernel, and now the husk.