Dhū l-Qarnayn nell’esegesi sciita pre-buide

The eighteenth chapter of the Qurʾān, Sū rat al-kahf, transmits a story about a character, nicknamed Dhū l-Qarnayn which literally means ‘the two-horned one’. Scholars have already pointed to the importance of investigating the earliest stages of the accounts concerning this character with a view to understanding the entire tradition surrounding him. For this reason they have focused attention on the exegetical literature and, in particular, on the Sunni production of the Middle Ages. In this contribution, I will deal with the oldest Twelver Quranic commentaries written during the pre-buide period. My analysis has a two-fold aim: To extrapolate the various motifs connected with him in these texts and to verify how this character is utilized within the Imami context.