بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
How The Wall Was Constructed: “I will set between you and them a bank (barrier). Give me pieces of iron – till, when he had levelled up (the gap) between the cliffs (The valley walls), he said (to them) Blow! – till, when he had made it a fire, he said: Bring me molten copper to pour thereon. And (Gog and Magog) were not able to surmount, nor could they pierce (it).”
A unique legend that existed among the Tartars who where one of the major Majuj tribes that the Muslims faced and lived in this exact region as the wall, was that the wall of Dhul Qarnain was “magnetic, causing all iron equipment and weapons to fly off toward the mountains on approach”.
This may sound fantastic but it is actually very possible, a quality of this giant Dam which the Quran alludes to strongly is that it was built entirely from Iron and Brass, hence it is entirely possible the Quran meant it was a Giant Iron Dam, they may have used stone in places but the description in the Quran gives a clear impression that it was primarily Iron;
“Give me pieces of iron – till, when he had levelled up (the gap) between the cliffs (The valley walls), he said (to them) Blow! till, when he had made it a fire.” Meaning He kept using Iron until it was built then Heated up the wall until it was red Hot like fire, hence the wall is made of Solid Iron with molten Brass used later, and possibly stone throughout in places.
Dhul Qarnain built the giant solid Dam of blocks of Iron until He filled the Valley, depending on the location of the Wall this means the wall was Possibly 1800m in Height, some translations have, “made it level with the mountains” others have “filled up the gap”, it is better if it reads “until he filled the Gap between the two mountains (valley floor)”, it would be logical that he built the Dam to some substantial height between the towering valley walls, and not histories tallest Dam at 1800m as some translations force us to conclude, the tallest Dam in the world today is only 305m (1001ft).
The fact that the wall was magnetic is actually very easy to achieve, especially because he was using iron, since Iron is a natural ferromagnetic material. “The earliest magnets were lodestone Ferric Ferrite, (Fe3O4), a sort of natural magnet, related to today’s ceramic magnets. This material was a useful ore for iron, and was mined for that purpose in ancient times. The lodestone (which means “travel-stone”) was magnetized from the Earth’s magnetic field, as it was deposited.”
By 1200 AD, compass needles were being made of steel, which were magnetized by being repeatedly rubbed or “touched” with lodestones, and by 1600 AD three ways to magnetize a metal needle where discovered:
- By touch with a lodestone.
- By cold drawing or sticking the metal repeatedly in a North-South direction
- By exposure for a very long time to the Earth’s field while in a North-South orientation.
A Metal when brought to red heat is no longer magnetic, but it would become magnetic if allowed to cool while pointing North-South, the wall of Dhul Qarnain was naturally orientated in a North south direction, it was the Northern path he took off His west-east travels across the earth.
Dhul Qarnain after building the initial wall with Iron blocks and secured it’s construction, heated up the entire wall of iron section by section, until it was all red hot like fire, all the iron blocks would have fused together into almost one giant brick of iron, at the same time this would have made the iron lose all magnetic properties.
While it was still hot He poured Molten Brass over sections of it until the wall looked like a red and black stripped shirt, the description given in ahadith, the black strip being the Iron wall underneath and the red stripe is the Brass on top. This was possibly done to protect it from rust kind of like magnesium plates are stuck to the hull of a ship, called the sacrificial anode (metal), because it is sacrificed to keep the integrity of the larger structure. Anode materials are usually made of aluminum, brass, bronze, copper, magnesium, titanium, zinc. Brass was often used historically in ships as a natural antifoulant, preventing rot and materials going foul.
The heated Iron would have allowed it to fuse with the molten Brass, the metal would have been worked by striking it until the wall became two layers of Metal fused together, He then allowed it to cool entirely in a North South direction helping magnatize.
To permanently magnetize metal in modern times you need to heat the metal past its Curie Point and then allow it to cool within a strong magnetic field, you can also magnetize metal simply by subjecting it to high shock, for example, by striking it with a hammer, the metal needs to be hit repeatedly. It will first gradually become a weak magnet, and get slightly stronger each time your strike it.
After it was cooled completely the wall would have been subjected to repeated blows to permanently magnetise it, and due to it’s size, the magnetic effect would have been substantial.
What is happening to the Iron wall by striking it is that “the added energy from striking the metal allows the atomic-level magnetic domains to rearrange themselves in a magnetic field. Since the planet’s iron core produces its own magnetic field, these miniature magnets (in the metal) rearrange themselves to point north (it helped that the wall itself was built in a north-south direction). Once enough jostling has occurred, all these miniature magnets pointed in the same direction creates a (larger) magnetic effect strong enough for us to notice” making the wall a giant magnet the repelled metal weapons and tools.
Sayyid Rami Al Rifai.
وَحَنَانًا مِّن لَّدُنَّا وَزَكَاةً
