Fwd: WORD FOR WORD: Zulqarnain — Alexander or Cyrus?

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gandhara , Yashwant K <yashwant0k wrote:

 

 

 

 

WORD FOR WORD: Zulqarnain — Alexander or Cyrus? —Khaled Ahmed

 

Alexander is a curious word. The `ander' part in it means `man' and comes from

`aner' through a grammatical change. We know that `nar' in Persian and Sanskrit

means `man'. Name Andrew means `manly'. Alexander means `he who saves men'. Alex

is a negative of `leg' meaning `to join'. Root `lg' appears in `lex' (law) and

`religion'

 

We all believe that there was once a good king called Zulqarnain whom Allah made

powerful on earth. The Quran says (18:83-94) he travelled to where he sun set in

a muddy well, after which he went east where the sun rises. He then went north

where he built a wall to protect the world against Yajuj-Majuj or Gog and Magog.

 

Zulqarnain means man with two horns. Although old tradition says Moses had two

horns, Muslims have largely identified him with Alexander the Great. In Rome,

the statue of Moses has two horns.

 

Firdausi in his Shahnama immortalised him as the just king and conqueror. He

`owns' him by making him the grandson of Darius. But there is another candidate

for the legend of Zulqarnain and that is the great Persian king Cyrus.

 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad thought Zulqarnain was Alexander. Many Muslims follow

that tradition. Alexander as Iskandar has always been a popular name. His wall

is known as sadd-e-Iskandari. Almost all great Persian poets wrote at least one

masnavi about him.

 

Archaeological discovery showed that Cyrus was the great king who rescued the

Jews from their exile in Babylon. The king with two horns is mentioned by

prophet Daniel. He wore the two horns to indicate his control of two countries:

Pars and Medea.

 

Zulqarnain is also a Muslim name because the Quran speaks well of him. It comes

from the root `qrn' meaning horn, head, brain and top end of the body. It also

means ruler or leader. An epoch is also qaran and when you refer to past ages in

Urdu you use the plural qurun-e-ulaa.

 

The `qrn' root is curious. It appears in Greek as `kr' and in Latin as `krn',

which makes me think that it is one and the same thing. The origin of the word

must be Syriac from where many words have radiated to the Semitic and

Indo-European group of languages.

 

Greek `kr' became `sr' since Latin had no `k' sound. So we have rhinoceros

meaning horn on the nose. The mythical horse unicorn has one horn because corn

here means horn. (Note the transformation of Latin corn into horn in English.)

In Persian and Urdu sar means head and in Urdu-Hindi the same word is used to

indicate top end (sira). Our name for South Punjab, Seraiki, comes from Sindhi

siro meaning top end. In English cranium for skull has the same root. Christian

name Cornelius means crowned.

 

The musical instrument horn was first fashioned out of a horn. Another name for

it is cornet. The word for head in Urdu is sar but in Latin the word for

head/brain is cerebrum in which the root is cer. A derivative is the cervical

bone.

 

Alexander is also a curious word. The ander part in it means man and comes from

aner through a grammatical change andros. We know that nar in Persian and

Sanskrit means man. Another version is anthropos (man with an eye from ops

meaning eye).

 

From aner came andros. Name Andrew means manly. Alexander means he saves men.

The saving sense is conveyed in alex which is a negative of leg meaning to join.

Root `lg' appears in lex (law) and religion. Religion binds and the word

ligature means bound.

 

The `lg' root is the same as in Urdu-Hindi lag (join) and alag (separate).

Alexander separated men from harm and therefore was saviour of men. We believe

that the Quran, talking of a non-Muslim favourably gave us the permission to

admire all men of other creeds who are just and wise.

 

Alexander was surely such a man. After his conquest of Persia he gave them a

charter of equal humanity in which he tried to remove the ancient rivalry

between the Persian and Greek civilisations. Cyrus too was a just king marking

the high point in the Achamaenid dynasty. *

 

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_14-11-2004_pg3_4

 

 

 

 

 

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