They
will question thee, O Mahommed, regarding Zu'lkarnain. Reply: I will tell
you his history"--and then follows the story of the erection of the
Rampart of Yajuj and Majuj. In ch. xxi. again there is an allusion to
their expected issue at the latter day. This last expectation was one of
very old date. Thus the Cosmography of Aethicus, a work long believed
(though erroneously) to have been abridged by St. Jerome, and therefore to
be as old at least as the 4th century, says that the Turks of the race of
Gog and Magog, a polluted nation, eating human flesh and feeding on all
abominations, never washing, and never using wine, salt, nor wheat, shall
come forth in the Day of Antichrist from where they lie shut up behind the
Caspian Gates, and make horrid devastation. No wonder that the irruption
of the Tartars into Europe, heard of at first with almost as much
astonishment as such an event would produce now, was connected with this
prophetic legend![1] The Emperor Frederic II., writing to Henry III. of
England, says of the Tartars: "'Tis said they are descended from the Ten
Tribes who abandoned the Law of Moses, and worshipped the Golden Calf.
They are the people whom Alexander Magnus shut up in the Caspian
Mountains."

[See the chapter _Gog et Magog dans le roman en alexandrins_, in Paul
Meyer's _Alexandre le Grand dans la Litterature francaise_. Paris, 1886,
II. pp. 386-389.--H. C.]:

"Gos et Margos i vienent de la tiere des Turs
Et. cccc. m. hommes amenerent u plus,
Il en jurent la mer dont sire est Neptunus
Et le porte d'infier que garde Cerberus
Que l'orguel d'Alixandre torneront a reues
Por cou les enclot puis es estres desus.
Dusc' al tans Antecrist n'en istera mais nus."

According to some chroniclers, the Emperor Heraclius had already let loose
the Shut-up Nations to aid him against the Persians, but it brought him no
good, for he was beaten in spite of their aid, and died of grief.

The theory that the Tartars were Gog and Magog led to the Rampart of
Alexander being confounded with the Wall of China (see infra, Bk. I. ch.
lix.), or being relegated to the extreme N.E. of Asia, as we find it in
the Carta Catalana.

These legends are referred to by Rabbi Benjamin, Hayton, Rubruquis,
Ricold, Matthew Paris, and many more. Josephus indeed speaks of the Pass
which Alexander fortified with gates of steel. But his saying that the
King of Hyrcania was Lord of this Pass points to the Hyrcanian Gates of