A Study of the Semantic Process in the Story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Quran

Storytelling is one of the important and practical tactics employed in the Koran to convey meanings and concepts. The present article adopts discourse semio-semantics, which is considered as a new approach and which provides the possibility of systematic analysis and evaluation of texts, to make a contribution to this process of conveying Koranic meanings and terms. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Koran, an important didactic story which depicts one of the important idols who played a role in humanity’s world, has the potential to be studied from a semio-semantic perspective. The Koran introduces Dhul-Qarnayn by describing his three journeys. There are sixteen verses in the eighteenth chapter (sūrat) of the Koran, i.e. “The Cave” (Al-Kahf), about his personality and actions. Therefore, the writer seeks to discover the discourse process governing this story in order to provide a plan for the process of production of and formulating meaning in the story. The findings suggest that the dominant discourse of the story, especially in his third journey which is made to build a dam, is action-based. Action function has an important role in the narrative process of the story and action atmosphere controls the process of meaning production. Activists, by gaining power during an action process, are released from meaning crisis and go from the negative status of disconnection from security to the positive status of connection to security. Moreover during this process they succeed in taking over the value object which they had lost due to an external force. Furthermore, Dhul-Qarnayn’s all three journeys are driven by his superego since they are made to the farthest places in order to create a space to take humanity to perfection. This behavior originates from his monotheistic view, which is his fundamental belief and is rooted in his essence, and conveys the ethic process to the reader.