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1. saraban
2. The narrative found in Q 18:60–82 includes two main stages. In the irst (vv. 60–65), Moses travels with his servant to “the junction of the two seas” (majmaʿ al-baḥrayn), where he meets the Servant of God. In the second (vv. 65–82), Moses follows the Servant of God on a new journey, during which he experiences the unpredictability of divine will. The pericope opens with Moses declaring his intention to travel to the junction of the two seas (Q 18:60). The Quranic text states that he is able to reach it after hearing from his young attendant about the ish that they were carrying with them escaping. This is twice referred to, in vv. 61 and 63. In both cases the dynamic is described by exactly the same phrase, fa-ttakhadha sabīlahu fī l-baḥr (“and it [the ish] took its way in the sea”), except for the word that follows. In v. 61 the phrase ends with saraban, while v. 63 has ʿajaban, which is commonly translated as “wondrously” or “in a marvellous way,” and does not ofer particular diiculties of interpretation. By contrast, saraban in v. 61 presents some complications. While the root s-r-b is found in three other Quranic passages—sarāb (“mirage”) in 24:39 and 78:20, and sārib (“to go forth or away”) in 13:10—sarab is a Quranic hapax legomenon, that is, it appears only once. One way to understand saraban is to read it as the accusative of sarab, which means “tunnel” or “subterranean excavation.” Then the phrase in v. 61 can be translated as either “and it took its way in the sea by way of a subterranean excavation” or “and it took its way: a subterranean excavation in the sea,” depending on whether saraban is considered an accusative of circumstance (ḥāl) or a second direct object (the irst being sabīlahu) of the verb ittakhadha. Such an understanding of the phrase is complicated by the cryptic idea of a tunnel into the sea.

1. The early exegetical commentary ascribed to Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) tries to solve this conceptual problem by explaining that once it reached the sea, the ish split it when passing through, and the shape of the wake the ish left in the sea was similar to a tun nel in the ground (ka-hayʾat al-sarab fī l-ʿarḍ) (Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān 2:593, ad Q 18:61). al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) is more concerned with the meaning of saraban and lists several explanations. The irst is attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, who explained that saraban meant that the wake of the ish was rocklike. A second explanation is attributed to the Prophet himself through a hadith reported by Ibn ʿAbbās on the authority of ʿUbayy b. Kaʿb. According to this report, the water split itself in front of the ish and when Moses saw that path (maslakahu) he said: “This is what we were seeking!” (Q 18:64). Another report, attributed to Qatāda, one of the companions of the Prophet, claims that where the ish passed it left a wake of frozen water. According to a fourth understanding, attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, each part of the sea the ish touched became dry and turned to rock. A inal explanation, reported on the authority of Ibn Wahb, on the authority of Ibn Zayd, is that God made the ish come back to life but that it made its way to the water in a valley and not in the sea. Al-Ṭabarī accepts all the explanations as plau sible, while expressing his preference for the second one, as it was reported on the authority of the Prophet (Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān fī taʾwīl al-Qurʾān, 16: 273–74, ad Q 18:61). Analogous interpretations occur in the work by later commentators (e.g., al-Zamakhsharī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Ibn Kathīr), who report about miraculous events or divine interventions that brought about the solidiication of the sea or the blocking of its run ning.
2. [9:20 AM]Such attempts to relate the path the ish takes in the sea to passage on land are direct consequences of the apparent discordance between the meaning of the word sarab, “subter ranean passage,” and the place where it is said to be found: the sea (Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1971), 381).

Despite the fact that saraban is read most often as an accusative form by the exegetes, some ofer another reading—saraban as the verbal noun of sariba “to low” appearing in adverbial position (ḥāl). For instance, the Shiʿi commentator al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1153) sug gests that the phrase could be taken as meaning fa-sariba l-ḥūt saraban (lit. and the ish lowed lowing) (Al-Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-Ḥayāt, s.d.), 3: 178–82). Al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) also observes that it could mean sariba fī l-baḥr saraban (lit. and it lowed in the sea lowing), but, he emphasizes, “God said fa-ttakhadha” instead of sariba (Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb: Tafsīr al-kabīr (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿat al-Bahiyyat al-Miṣriyya, 1935), 2: 146). As noted, modern-day translators of the Quran mostly follow these two understandings of saraban. However, a third explanation has recently been suggested by Christoph Luxenberg, who attempts a philological solution on the basis of the method he propounds to decode the Quran. According to Luxenberg, a spelling mistake is at the base of the reading saraban, which should instead be read sharyā, a Syriac participle adjective meaning “freely.” As will appear evident below, Luxenberg’s interpretation of saraban is unlikely and somewhat forced.

Taken by itself the curious episode about the ish’s escape is diicult to interpret. All we know is that the ish breaks loose near a rock at the junction of the two seas and that this event indicates to Moses that he has reached the goal of his journey. When examined in light of a legend concerning Alexander’s journey to the Land of the Blessed, during which he fails to bathe in the water of life, the episode acquires more sense, however. Speciically, the ish’s escape represents an allusion to the resurrection of a salt ish after Alexander’s cook washes it in the water of life. The most ancient versions of this story are found in three sources preceding or contemporaneous to the rise of Islam: the Rec. β of the Alexander Romance (fourth/ifth century), the Babylonian Talmud (Tamīd, 32a–32b), and the so-called Syriac Alexander Song (ca. 630–635). Muslim exegetes introduced some elements of this legend in their explanation of the narrative told in the Quran. In fact, the ish’s escape episode is usually related to the motif of the water of life. For instance, the early tafsīr ascribed to Muqātil (supra, n. 5) explains that Moses and his boy-servant pass the night nearby the rock where the source of life (ʿayn al-ḥayāt) is located, and that the salt ish (samaka māliḥa) they bring with them comes to life after being sprinkled with that water (al-Ṭabarī (supra, n. 6), 16: 279, ad Q 18:65).

1. Western scholars, too, almost unanimously consider this story of Alexander to be behind the Quranic account (A. J. Wensinck, “al-Khaḍir,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1960 2004), 4: 902b–5b. See also Aaron Hughes, “The Stranger at the Sea: Mythopoesis in the Qur’ân and early tafsîr,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 32 (2003): 261–79. Brannon Wheeler, who dismisses any direct relation ship between Q 18:60–82 and the Alexander legend, has attempted to challenge the dominant views concerning the dependence of Q 18:60–82 on the Alexander tale (“Moses or Alexander? Early Islamic Exegesis of Qurʾān 18:60 65,” JNES 57,3 [1998]: 191–215); yet the results he achieves are highly doubtful. The same arguments are repeated in his Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis (London: Routledge, 2002), 10–36. For a critique of Wheeler’s study, see Kevin van Bladel, “The Syriac Sources of the Early Arabic Narratives of Alexander,” in Memory as His tory: The Legacy of Alexander in South Asia, ed. H. P. Ray (New Dehli: Aryan International, 2007), 59–60. See also Kevin van Bladel, “The Alexander Legend in the Qurʾān 18:83–102,” in The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, ed. G. S. Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2007), 197–98 n. 8).
2. [9:31 AM]This is particularly evident in the Syriac Alexander Song, whose author designates the miraculous source as “fountain of living water” (ʿynʾ d-myʾ ḥyʾ), “fountain of life” (ʿyn’ d-ḥyʾ), and “fountain of the water of life” (ʿynʾ d-myʾ d-ḥyʾ) (G. J. Reinink, Das Syrische Alexanderlied: Die drei Rezensionen, CSCO 454–455).

Such expressions closely recall those by which the baptismal ceremony is referred to in several Christian texts from late antiquity. Furthermore, in the Song the act by which Alexander would acquire immortality is always designated by the verb sḥʾ, “to bathe,” which has a ritual signiicance related to baptism. The fountain of life is thus a baptismal symbol—an idea expressed also in the above-mentioned legend concerning Constantine (Mario Casari, “La fontana della vita tra Silvestro e Ḫiḍr: Alessandro e Costantino a confronto,” in Medioevo romanzo e orientale: Macrotesti fra Oriente e Occidente, ed. G. Carbonaro et al. (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2003), 230–31). As for the particular episode of the salt ish coming back to life, this might have been read as an allusion to Christ’s resurrection, the ish being a very common symbol for Jesus in late antique art and literature. This would explain the absence of the motif of the ish’s reviviication in the Talmudic version of the legend of the water of life. Indeed, the author (or authors) of the Talmudic account has intentionally eliminated the episode from the core of the narration in accordance with his theological agenda, for by omitting to men tion the ish coming back to life he avoids any reference to Jesus’ resurrection that is implied. When at v. 63 the Quran states that the ish “took its way in the sea in a marvelous way,” it evidently refers to its wondrously being revived upon contact with the miraculous water. In fact, the enigmatic episode acquires sense only if read in light of the dynamic described in the legend of the water of life, and the extreme vagueness with which the Quran describes the episode suggests that its audience was expected to be acquainted with the Alexander tale. The philological evidence conirms this view.

The term ʿajab, “wonder,” occurs ive times in the Quran; two of these are in sura al-Kahf—the irst in our verse in question, 18:63, and the second in 18:9 to describe the story of the companions of the cave: “Or dost thou think the Men of the Cave and Er-Rakeem were among Our signs a wonder (ʿajaban)” (trans. Arberry). The Anomoean Church historian Philostorgius (d. ca. 439) attributes to the waters of the river Hyphasis miraculous properties similar to those with which the water of life is credited in the story of Alexander. According to Philostorgius (Church History, bk 3, §10), 21 the Hyphasis had the power to cure violent fevers when the sick person soaked in its waters. Philo storgius identiies the Hyphasis with the biblical Pishon, that is, one of the four riv ers—with the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Gihon—lowing from the Garden of Eden, as referred to in Gen 2:10–14.

It is important to note that in the Talmudic version of the story of Alexander, the water of life is in turn paralleled to, and eventually identiied with, one of the paradisiacal rivers. In fact, according to this version of the story, Alexander washes a salt ish in a stream whose fragrance then reveals that the waters low from the Garden of Eden (Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis. A New American Translation [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985], 1: 52). By following this watercourse Alexander is able to reach the earthly paradise, which here takes the place of the Land of the Blessed. This version of the story of Alexander relects a simple idea that follows the literal understanding of Gen 2:10–14, namely, that the earthly paradise could be reached by following the course of one of the four rivers (Commentaries on Genesis 1–3, ed. Michael Glerup [Downers Glove, Ill.: InterVanity Press, 2010], 66). In fact, sources conirm that during late antiquity it was widely held that paradise was a physical place situ ated on the other side of the ocean encircling the earth (Joachim Jeremias, “παράδεισος,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 5: 767–68; J. E. Wright, The Early History of Heaven). In accordance with this concept, it was generally assumed that the rivers lowing from paradise passed under this ocean to reach the inhabited part of the world.

1. This idea goes back at least to Ephrem (d. ca. 373), who in his commentary on Genesis (§2, ¶6) states: “Paradise is set on a great height, the rivers are swallowed up again and they go down to the sea as if through a tall water duct (ʾyk d-mn qtrynʾ) and so they pass through the earth which is under the sea into this land” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Selected Prose Works, tr. Edward G. Mathews, Jr., and Joseph P. Amar (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2004), 101; Syriac text: R.-M. Tonneau, Sancti Ephraem Syri in Genesim et in Exodum commentarii, CSCO 152, Script. Syri 71 (Leuven: Peeters, 1955), 29), and was taken up by other late antique authors, such as the above-mentioned Philostorgius and Seve rian of Gabala, but also Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) (Ancoratus, §58) and Augustine (d. 430) (Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk 8, §7; cf. Philo of Alexandria, Questions and Answers on Genesis, bk 1, §12)
2. In his discussion of the third day of creation, the anonymous author of the Syriac history “Cave of Trea sures” (rec. I, §1, ¶¶14–16; cf. Philo, De opiicio mundi, §38) provides us with a description: “Les eaux s’amassèrent dans les mers, sous la terre, à l’intérieur d’elle et sur elle. Et Dieu it à l’intérieur de la terre, en dessous, des passages (mʿbrtʾ), des veines (šrynʾ), des courants (rhṭʾ), des torrents (nḥlʾ), et d’ouvertures (nqbʾ) pour la circulation des eaux [. . .] Or la terre, par dessous, était faite comme une éponge pour les eaux parce qu’elle était établie et posée sur les eaux” (Andreas Su-Min Ri, La Caverne des Trésors: Les deux recensions syriaques, CSCO 486–487, Script. Syri 207–208, 2 vols. [Leuven: Peeters, 1987], Syr. text, 1: 8; Fr. trans., 2: 4). Cf. a Syriac astronomical treatise attributed to Ps.-Denys (late ifth/early sixth century), according to which “la surface inférieure de la terre est faite comme une éponge; et l’intérieur de la terre, de passages (mʿbrtʾ) et de creux (ḥlylʾ); tout (ce qui est à l’intérieur) fut fait pour la course des eaux des leuves et des sources, et aussi pour l’utilité du chaud et du froid” (Andreas Su-Min Ri, Commentaire de la Caverne des Trésors: Étude sur l’histoire du texte et de ses sources, CSCO 581, Subsidia 103 [Leuven: Peeters, 2000], 126); see Marc-Antoine Kugener, “Un traité astronomique et météorologique syriaque attribué à Denys l’Aréopagite,” in Actes du XIVe Congrès international des orientalistes, Alger 1905 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1907), 2: 153. On the idea of subterranean waters, see also A. J. Wensinck, The Ocean in the Literature of the Western Semites (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1918), 15–19.

The geographer Cosmas Indicopleustes (sixth century) also considers the four rivers to reach the inhabited world by following a subterranean course under the ocean: “the four rivers which divine scripture says emanate from Paradise cleave a pas sage through the ocean and spring up in this earth” (Christian Topography, 2,81) ( J. W. McCrindle, tr., The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk (London: The Hakluyt Soci ety, 1897; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010), 75). In his Homilies on Creation, the Syriac theologian and poet Narsai (d. 502) refers to a very similar concept about the course of the rivers from paradise to earth: “Glorious was its [paradise] spring, whose course lows at the four extremities [of the earth] / and like a pipe in the sea (w-ʾyk sylwʾ b-ymʾ), it passes [through it] without mixing [its water with it]” (Hom. 1, vv. 395–96) (P. Gignoux, Homélies de Narsaï sur la création, Patrologia Orientalis 34,3–4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), 550). The author of the so-called Syriac Alexander Legend (ca. 629) doubtless had a clear and complete picture of these cosmological concepts about paradise in mind when he wrote:

God made four rivers to go forth from the paradise of Eden. As He knew that men would dare to go up these rivers to enter paradise, He drew them inside the earth and brought them through valleys, mountains, and plains. Then, after leading them across many mountains, He made them spring out at their feet, and there is one that He made low from a cave. As for paradise, He sur rounded it with seas, rivers, and the ocean, the fetid sea, so that men cannot get close to it, nor can they see where the rivers have their source; all that they see is the place from which they spring, from mountains or valleys (Syriac text: E. A. Wallis-Budge, The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1889), 206).

In light of the above cosmological concepts from late antiquity—on the one hand, the identiication of the water of life with the rivers of paradise, as conirmed by Philostorgius and, more signiicantly, in the Talmudic version of the Alexander legend, and, on the other hand, the idea that these rivers lowed underground beneath the sea from paradise to the inhabited earth, as several authors report—it seems very likely that saraban in Q 18:63 is meant to describe the subterranean passage under the sea that the ish takes once resur rected by the miraculous water of the paradisiacal rivers.

Therefore, in light of the text behind the narrative found in Q 18:60–65, such an inter pretation of saraban seems the most accurate. Moreover, it appears to be consistent with Quranic paradisiacal imagery—paradise in the Quran is constantly depicted as a place char acterized by its close relationship with sweet waters. For instance, Q 88:10–12 describes paradise as “an elevated garden [. . .] in which is a running fountain,” an image recalling Ephrem’s description of paradise as the source of the rivers “situated on a great height”; and “the godfearing shall be amidst gardens and fountains” (Q 15:45; 51:15, cf. 44:51–52; 55:50, 66; 77:41; 88:12). Furthermore, the motif of the paradisiacal rivers appears (Q 47:15, “in it are rivers of water incorruptible; rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine, a joy to those who drink; and rivers of honey pure and clear”), and inally, and most importantly, it is worth noting that the cosmological notion of the subterranean course of the paradisiacal rivers is possibly given substance by the very common phrase jannātun tajrī min taḥtihā l-anhāru (“gardens from beneath which the rivers low”), which epitomizes the Quranic description of paradise and would seem to refer to the very idea of the underground course of rivers leading from the garden to the earth as has been suggested of the term sara ban above. Moreover, the use of the deinite article before anhār suggests that all the rivers are meant here, which again could evidence the ancient Near Eastern and bibli cal idea that the earth’s rivers are of divine origin and their source is located in a paradisiacal land. Indeed, as Heidi Toelle notes, the Quran implies a direct relationship between the sweet waters of paradise and those of the earth, as in most cases they are indicated with the same terminology (Heidi Toelle, Le Coran revisité: Le feu, l’eau, l’air et la terre (Damascus: IFPO, 2003), 122).

1. majmaʿ al-baḥrayn
2. The link between paradisiacal and terrestrial waters, to which it is suggested saraban refers, is relected in turn by the notion of majmaʿ al-baḥrayn (“the junction of the two seas”), which speciies the location where the ish is said to have miraculously escaped by way of the sarab. Muslim commentators tried to provide an actual geographical location— most often the meeting point of the Baḥr al-Rūm and the Baḥr Fāris (W. E. Mulligan, “al-Baḥrayn,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 1: 940b–41a; Wensinck, “al-Khaḍir,” 4: 903a). Western scholars have more convincingly associated the expression majmaʿ al-baḥrayn with cosmological concepts of the origins and the course of the rivers that were prevalent since very ancient times, for instance, a relection of El’s abode on a cosmic mountain located “at the springs of the two rivers, midst the channels of the two deeps,” as it is referred to in some Ugaritic texts (Marvin H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955), 61–80. See also Edward Lipiński, “El’s Abode: Mythological Traditions Related to Mount Hermon and to the Mountains of Armenia,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 2 (1971): 225–26). On the other hand, Arent Jan Wensinck associates the “junction of the two seas” with Utnapishtim’s abode at the “the mouth of the rivers” (ina pî nārāti), mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Wensinck, “al-Khaḍir,” 903b).

The parallel proposed by Wensinck is consistent with his suggestion that the encounter between Moses and the Servant of God in Q 18:65 is reminiscent of that between Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim in the Epic (11). Although it is plausible that Q 18:60–65—as well as the Alexander legend to which it is related—is somehow related to the ancient story of Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality (Wouter Henkelman, “Beware of Dim Cooks and Cunning Snakes: Gilgameš, Alexander, and the Loss of Immortality.” In Interkulturalität in der alten Welt: Vorderasien, Hellas, Ägypten und die vielfältigen Ebenen des Kontakts, ed. Robert Rollinger et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 323–60), it is diicult, if not impossible, to establish a direct philological link between the Akkadian ina pî nārāti and the Arabic majmaʿ al-baḥrayn. However, it seems likely that the expressions refer to similar cosmological concepts. As Andrew George has convincingly argued, the notion of ina pî nārāti is meant to describe the place across the encircling sea where the rivers were thought to rise again after passing through a subterranean ocean of sweet waters (Apsû) (George (The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003], 1: 520–21). This notion strongly mirrors the late antique imagery about the course of the paradisiacal rivers, as well as the Quranic saraban.

The ancient Canaanite and Babylonian notions to which majmaʿ al-baḥrayn has been related are part of a larger cosmological imagery that is shared by the Book of Genesis. Scholars have often invoked correspondences between both Utnapishtim’s and El’s abodes and some features of the biblical Garden of Eden, among which the four rivers (Howard N. Wallace, The Eden Narrative (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 76–77, 85–8). Through the Bible these ancient notions continued to wield a lasting inluence on the late antique descriptions of paradise by Jewish and Christian authors. As a consequence, the paradi siacal mountain described by Ephrem as the source of all the rivers of the earth does not considerably difer from the ancient Canaanite and Israelite imagery of the sacred places (Gary Anderson, “The Cosmic Mountain: Eden and Its Early Interpreters in Syriac Christianity,” in Genesis 1–3 in the History of Exegesis: Intrigue in the Garden, ed. Gregory Allen Robbins (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1988), 187–224). In much the same way, the image of the Land of the Blessed or of the Garden of Eden, which the authors of the various versions of the Alexander story of the water of life probably had in mind, should not have been too diferent from how a Babylonian reader conceived the abode of Utnapishtim at “the mouth of the rivers.”

Since the legend of the water of life represents the text behind Q 18:60–65, it seems reasonable that the “junction of the two seas” to which Moses is said to journey was thought to represent a similar place, that is, a land with a special connection to the waters of the rivers. A deeper analysis of the expression majmaʿ al-baḥrayn conirms this view, with the scene described in Q 18:60–65 appearing closely connected to late antique concepts about the origins of sweet waters. In four other passages than 18:60–65 (Q 25:53, 27:61, 35:12, 55:19), the Quran alludes to the existence of two diferent seas (baḥrān), which are described as separate bodies of sweet and salt water. Scholars have argued that these two seas correspond to the waters that are located, according to the biblical cosmology, above and below the irmament (Gen 1:6–8) (Toelle, Le Coran revisité, 125–26; Angelika Neuwirth, “Cosmology,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. J. D. McAulife (Leiden: Brill, 2001–2006), 1: 445–46).

1. al-ṣakhra
2. The speciic representation of the meeting point between the celestial and terrestrial seas suggests that the rock (ṣakhra) from which the ish in Q 18:63 is said to escape was thought to be located at the junction between heaven and earth. Once again, this description closely recalls the ancient Near Eastern and Judaic imagery of the cosmic mountain of God. Similar images also occur in the works of some Syriac authors, who represent the paradisiacal moun tain as the axis mundi, that is, the junction between the upper and lower parts of the world. For instance, Ephrem describes paradise as a mountain encircling the whole creation (Hymns on Paradise, 1, §§8–9; 2, §6), an image that “suggests that the cosmic mountain is at once a peak and irmament” (Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext, 61). Furthermore, the author of the Alexander Legend concludes that “[paradise] is close to neither heaven nor earth. It is rather like a fair and mighty city, which appears between heaven and earth [. . .]” (Wallis-Budge, The History of Alexander the Great, 206). Except for the reports about the miʿrāj, which are late with regard to the Quran, it seems that the designation of the sacred rock by the term ṣakhra is ancient. The construction of the Dome on the Rock on this site relects the veneration that this place enjoyed among the members of the early Muslim community. If the rock reached by Moses in Q 18:63 stood for the sacred rock of Jerusalem, this would concur with the continuous overlapping between Jerusalem (Zion) and paradise, present in both biblical and extra-biblical literature. As a consequence of this superposition of the two “holy places,” Jerusalem is often associated with the water imagery typical of paradise. Indeed, the prominent motif of the stream of living water emanating from Zion’s cosmic mountain (Ezra 47:1–12; Joel 3:18; Ps 46:4) recalls the imagery of the paradisiacal rivers in Gen 2:10–14.

1. This parallelism is strengthened by the meaningful homonymy between the Gihon spring, found in Jerusalem, and one of the four paradisiacal rivers (H. Eising, “Gîhôn,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–), 2: 466–68; Georg Fohrer and Eduard Lohse, “Σιών,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 7: 317–18). Still more signiicantly, Ps 36 identiies the cosmic stream lowing from Zion with the fountain of the water of life—an element that also represents a possible point of contact with the legend of Alexander examined here. In much the same way, the prophecy of Zechariah (Zech 14:8) states that living waters (mayyim ḥayyîm) shall low from Jerusa lem on the inal day (Tommaso Tesei, “The Barzakh and the Intermediate State of the Dead in the Qurʾan,” in Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions, ed. Christian Lange). It is noteworthy that the potential allusion to Jerusalem in Q 18:63 is also consistent with the replacement of Alexander by Moses as protagonist in the Quranic account. Some have attributed this exchange of characters to possible imprecisions in the Quran in retelling the Alexander story (Armand Abel, “Ḏū’l-Qarnayn, prophète de l’universalité,” Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 11 (1951), 6–18; Richard Hartmann, “Zur Erklärung von Sūre 18, 59 f.,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 24 (1910), 307–15). However, some elements suggest that the presence of Moses instead of Alexander in Q 18:60–82 is not accidental, but seems instead to be related to the biblical motif about Moses’ impossibility of entering the Promised Land, which duplicates and then replaces Alexander’s failure to enter paradise.
2. Conclusion

Sources from late antiquity do not present a univocal way of representing the universe, but rather show that the populations of the eastern Roman empire knew at least two diverse and somehow conlicting cosmological models (J. Edward Wright, The Early History of Heaven). The first and more widespread model can be classiied as Aristotelian or Greco-Roman; it describes the earth as located at the center of a universe composed of diferent heavens (usually seven), represented as concentric spheres. From the second century and throughout the Middle Ages, this model became predominant thanks to the inluence of the work of Ptolemy. The second cosmological model derives from the ancient Semitic tradition, which pictured the earth as a lat disk encircled by waters and surmounted by a dome-like sky. This model irst appears in Akkadian and Ugaritic texts as well as in biblical descriptions of the universe. Through the Bible, this ancient cosmol ogy exercised a lasting inluence on the imagery of Jewish and Christian authors until the Middle Ages, when the Aristotelian model was deinitively adopted. Some eforts to mediate between the two cosmological models and to produce a mixed system are evidenced, namely, in some apocalyptic works (e.g., 2 Enoch and 3 Baruch), but often the two difering views generated a dispute among the erudite Christians of the Byzantine empire as to which was the true one, or to be more precise, the delicate question of whether the cosmographic descrip tion given in the Bible was to be taken literally or allegorically (van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords and Prophetic Authority,” (supra, n. 2), 224–26, 241). In the period of the Quranic revelation, the debate was very intense.

Nevertheless, both interestingly and surprisingly, the Quran refers to both cosmological models (Neuwirth, “Cosmology,” 445). Be that as it may, the Quran commentators seem to have often misunderstood the passages containing concepts related to ancient Near Eastern and biblical cosmology (van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords and Prophetic Authority”).