5 unsolved puzzles in the Quran’s stories

In Surah al-Kahf, Moses meets “a servant of Ours to whom We had given mercy from Us and taught knowledge from Our presence.”^[1] Moses asks to follow him in order to learn, and is warned that he will not have patience. The man does three things that seem wrong: he damages a boat, kills a boy, and rebuilds a wall for a town that had refused them hospitality, without asking payment. Each is explained at the end by a hidden reason. The boat belonged to poor men and a king was seizing sound ships; the boy’s parents were believers and he would have burdened them with rebellion; the wall guarded a treasure for two orphans.

The Quran does not name him. A hadith reported by Ubayy ibn Kaʿb identifies him as Khidr, “the Green One”, because he sat on bare ground that turned green beneath him.^[2] Scholars differed on whether he was a prophet or a righteous servant, and most held that he has died. The strongest objection is that the story seems to approve a killing. The answer given is that the servant says he acted by command and not from himself (18:82), a case of knowledge granted to one man, and that it gives nobody a rule to copy.

Dhu al-Qarnayn, a just ruler who travels east and west, is asked by a people to protect them from Yājūj and Mājūj, who were causing corruption in the land. He has them bring blocks of iron, fills the gap between two mountains, and has molten copper poured over it. The barrier could not be climbed or pierced. He said: “This is a mercy from my Lord. When the promise of my Lord comes, He will level it.”^[3] Gog and Magog are mentioned again in Surah 21, which says that when they are let loose they descend “from every elevation”.^[4]

A hadith reported from Zaynab bint Jahsh has the Prophet saying that an opening the size of a ring had already been made in the wall of Gog and Magog.^[5] Muslim scholars have not located the wall. Some say it is figurative, medieval geographers looked for it in the Caucasus or Central Asia, and the Quran gives no site. The skeptic asks how a wall can still stand unseen. The reply from the text is that the account serves as a warning about the end of time and was never meant as a map, and that its detail is the promise of God, who will level it at the appointed time.

Young men flee a ruler who persecutes their belief in one God, take refuge in a cave, and are put to sleep. The Quran says they stayed “three hundred years and added nine”, and that God knows best how long they stayed.^[6] People will dispute how many they were: some will say three, the fourth their dog; some five, the sixth their dog; some seven, the eighth their dog. The Prophet is told not to argue about it but to say: “My Lord knows best their number.”^[7] The Quran gives their dog, and no names.

The puzzle is why a story with a famous parallel in Christian tradition, the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, is told here so sparingly. A sceptic will call it borrowing. The Quran says that it relates their story “in truth” (18:13), and gives its purpose in 18:21: people were made to find them so that they would know the promise of God is true and that the Hour is beyond doubt. The answer commentators give is that a number and names would distract from that point. Ibn Abbas is reported to have said that he was among the few who knew, and that they were seven.

Surah al-Baqara says that people followed what the devils taught of magic “and what was sent down to the two angels at Babylon, Harut and Marut.”^[8] The two said, “We are only a trial, so do not disbelieve,” yet people learned from them what separates husband and wife. The verse adds that none of it harms anyone except by the permission of God.

It is one of the most discussed verses. Most commentators read it as two angels sent as a test, who warned each person before teaching. Another reading, attributed to Ibn Abbas and al-Hasan al-Basri, vocalises the word as malikayn, “two kings”, which removes the difficulty of angels teaching sorcery. A third takes the particle mā as a negation, so that nothing was sent down to the two angels at all. Stories in which the two angels fall for a woman and are punished rest on weak chains, and many scholars rejected them. Whichever reading is taken, the lesson is the same: magic is a trial and a disbelief, and nobody can claim a warning was withheld.

The Quran names the “people of the Rass” twice. In Surah al-Furqan they appear beside ʿAd, Thamud and many generations between, and in Surah Qaf they stand among the peoples before Quraysh who denied their messengers, together with the people of Noah and Thamud.^[9] It does not say who they were. The word rass means a well or a trench, and the name was taken to mean people who lived at one or who were cast into one.

Commentators gave many answers, among them a people of Yamama, a people who killed their prophet by throwing him into a well, and the people of a place near Najd. Al-Tabari reports several of these and settles on none. None is certain, and the reports go back to early authorities, not to a statement of the Prophet. The sceptic may say the Quran names a people it cannot place. The reply is that the verses use the name only in a list, for a single claim: those who denied their messengers met their end. A reader needs nothing further to take that warning.