The Multiple Uses of an Enemy: Gog, Magog and the “Two-Horned One”

Abstract

One of the most famous historians of medieval Syria, Ibn al-Athīr (1160–1233), who as a young man fought in Saladin’s army against the Europeans later called crusaders, mentions the incursion of the Mongols (he refers to them as Tatars) into the domain of the Khwarizm Shah in his annalistic “perfect history” at the year 617/ 1220. The passage is one of the rare instances where an Arabian historian turns directly to his readers/hearers, when he writes: “For a number of years I continuously avoided the mention of this event, deeming it too horrible, so that I loathed its mention.”1 He then proceeds to describe the singularity of the gruesome events, comparing them with the story of the Banū Isrā’īl and Bukht Naṣr (the Israelites and Nebuchadnezzar), and the destruction of Jerusalem. He claims: “Indeed, history does not contain anything which comes near to it [the catastrophe of the Mongols] or gets close to it.”2 After reflecting on the past, Ibn al-Athīr turned to the future and speculated: “Possibly, there will never be a calamity like that until the world becomes extinct and the earth ceases to exist except [he simply says] Gog and Magog3.” With that, Ibn al-Athīr alluded to a tradition that originated in the Near East, in the Old Testament, and that is common to all monotheistic religions: the stories of Gog and Magog, Alexander the Great, and the End of Times. These legends were so well known and so often repeated that Ibn al-Athīr only needed to mention the name of Gog and Magog to evoke the stories around them in the memory of his readers/hearers. The names of Gog and Magog occur for the first time in the Old Testament (Gen. 10:2; Ezek. 38–39), where Gog seems to be a king and Magog the region where he reigned. In the New Testament, Gog and Magog appear in the Book of Revelation (20:8), where both are peoples who will invade the earth at the End of Time.