The Barrier Against Yaʾjūj and Maʾjūj

He took a third course, and there it says ḥattā idhā balagha bayna al-saddayn, where he came to a place that may have been between two, in another direction, but was a place between two barriers. There he found a people who seemed very primitive, and who were under oppression: another tribe living close by, violent, savages — worse than savages, to judge by the description given of them. These were Yaʾjūj wa Maʾjūj, Gog and Magog. The tribe of Gog and Magog were terrorising these people utterly.

So when he came to this place, these people complained to him, and he agreed. They said: we shall pay you for it. He said: what Allah has given me, what my Lord has enabled me with, is better; I need only some help from you. So he built a great barrier, so to speak, and filled it with metal and with every kind of material, of various sorts, for it speaks of their having to melt it down to fill it up.

Allah then says, in verse 57,^* that they were not able to scale it, and not able to make a hole in it. Every day, according to the hadith, they try; and then they go to sleep, and, as the hadith mentions, the wall returns to what it was — whatever they have done that day — because it is a promise of Allah that they will not come out until the Day of Judgement is near; and when that time comes, they will come out.

That is why Allah (swt) says in verse 98 that He will level it when the time comes, and that until then it stood as a mercy for them.

And then, when they do come, there is the whole account, which is one of the signs of the Day of Judgement, in which ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) will at first be helpless against them until he makes a duʿāʾ. And after they have done all their ravaging, Allah (swt) will send something by which they will all die. That is why Allah says that one of them will be upon the other.