Barbarian and nomadic identifications Throughout
classical and
late antiquity, Christian and Jewish writers identified Gog and Magog with a wide diversity of groups: •
Romans. This identification was made by
Eusebius. •
Goths. Gog and Magog were connected to the
Goths by
Ambrose (d. 397) and
Jordanes (d. 555). The latter believed that the Goths, Scythians, and
Amazons were all the same. The Goths also represent Gog and Magog in the ε and γ recensions of the
Alexander Romance, where the term "Gog and Magog" forms a portmanteau with "Goth" to form "Goth and Magoth". •
Sarmatians and Alans. This identification was made in
Josephus (for whom the Scythians were a subgroup of the Alans),
Pseudo-Hegesippus, and the
Chronicon Paschale. •
Huns. The
Byzantine writer
Procopius said it was the Huns Alexander had locked out, and in the
Syriac Alexander Legend the kingdom of the Huns is also used to represent Gog and Magog. •
Haphthalites. This identification was made by
Movses Kaghankatvatsi. •
Avars and Magyars. This identification was made by
Isidore of Seville,
Theodore Synkellos, the
Anonymi Bele regis notarii Gesta Hungarorum, and the
Chronicon Pictum. •
Turks. In Islamic tradition, the following authors identified Gog and Magog as the Turks:
Abu Hurayra,
al-Dahhak ibn Muzahim,
al-Baydawi, al-Qazwini, and
al-Majlisi. •
Khazars. This identification was made by
Aethicus Ister,
Iovane Sabanisje,
Christian of Stavelot,
Ahmad ibn Fadlan, and the ''
Hadith Dhi'l-Qarnayn''. •
Mongols and Tartars. This identification was made by the
Historia de Preliis,
Richer of Senones,
Matthew Paris,
Marco Polo,
Hayton of Corycus,
Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, and the
Continuation of Barhebraeus. •
Other. A Western monk named Fredegar seems to have Gog and Magog in mind in his description of savage hordes from beyond Alexander's gates who had assisted the Byzantine emperor
Heraclius (610–641) against the Muslim
Saracens.
Eurasian steppes As one nomadic people followed another on the Eurasian steppes, so the identification of Gog and Magog shifted. In the 9th and 10th centuries these kingdoms were identified by some with the lands of the
Khazars, a Turkic people whose leaders had converted to Judaism and whose empire dominated Central Asia–the 9th-century monk
Christian of Stavelot referred to Gazari, said of the Khazars that they were "living in the lands of Gog and Magog" and noted that they were "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism". Arab traveler ibn Fadlan also reported of this belief, writing around 921 he recorded that "Khazars are part of the Gog and Magog". After the Khazars came the
Mongols, seen as a mysterious and invincible horde from the east who destroyed Muslim empires and kingdoms in the early 13th century; kings and popes took them for the legendary
Prester John, marching to save Christians from the Muslim
Saracens, but when they entered Poland and Hungary and annihilated Christian armies a terrified Europe concluded that they were "Magogoli", the offspring of Gog and Magog, released from the prison Alexander had constructed for them and heralding
Armageddon.
Europeans in Medieval China reported findings from their travels to the
Mongol Empire. Some accounts and maps began to place the "Caspian Mountains", and Gog and Magog, just outside the
Great Wall of China. The
Tartar Relation, an obscure account of
Friar Carpini's 1240s journey to Mongolia, is unique in alleging that these Caspian Mountains in Mongolia, "where the Jews called Gog and Magog by their fellow countrymen are said to have been shut in by Alexander", were moreover purported by the Tartars to be magnetic, causing all iron equipment and weapons to fly off toward the mountains on approach. In 1251, the French friar
André de Longjumeau informed his king that the Mongols originated from a desert further east, and an apocalyptic Gog and Magog ("Got and Margoth") people dwelled further beyond, confined by the mountains. In the map of
Sharif Idrisi, the land of Gog and Magog is drawn in the northeast corner (beyond Northeast Asia) and enclosed. Some medieval European world maps also show the location of the lands of Gog and Magog in the far northeast of Asia (and the northeast corner of the world). In fact, Gog and Magog were held by the Mongol to be their ancestors, at least by some segment of the population. As traveler and Friar
Riccoldo da Monte di Croce put it in c. 1291, "They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called
Mogoli, as if from a corruption of
Magogoli".
Marco Polo, traveling when the initial terror had subsided, places Gog and Magog among the
Tartars in
Tenduc, but then claims that the names Gog and Magog are translations of the place-names Ung and Mungul, inhabited by the Ung and Mongols respectively. An explanation offered by Orientalist
Henry Yule was that Marco Polo was only referring to the "Rampart of Gog and Magog", a name for the Great Wall of China. Friar André's placement of Gog and Magog far east of Mongolia has been similarly explained.
The confined Jews , copper-engraved world map (). Gog and Magog (identified as confined Jews) are shown on the left, representing the far east. Some time around the 12th century, the
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel came to be identified with Gog and Magog; possibly the first to do so was
Petrus Comestor in
Historica Scholastica (c. 1169–1173), and he was indeed a far greater influence than others before him, although the idea had been anticipated by the aforementioned Christian of Stavelot, who noted that the Khazhars, to be identified with Gog and Magog, was one of
seven tribes of the Hungarians and had converted to Judaism. While the confounding Gog and Magog as confined Jews was becoming commonplace, some, like Riccoldo or
Vincent de Beauvais remained skeptics, and distinguished the Lost Tribes from Gog and Magog. As noted, Riccoldo had reported a Mongol folk-tradition that they were descended from Gog and Magog. He also addressed many minds (Westerners or otherwise) being credulous of the notion that Mongols might be Captive Jews, but after weighing the pros and cons, he concluded this was an open question. The Flemish Franciscan friar
William of Rubruck, who was first-hand witness to Alexander's
supposed wall in
Derbent on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1254, identified the people the walls were meant to fend off only vaguely as "wild tribes" or "desert nomads", but one researcher made the inference Rubruck must have meant Jews, and that he was speaking in the context of "Gog and Magog". Confined Jews were later to be referred to as "
Red Jews" (
die roten Juden) in German-speaking areas; a term first used in a
Holy Grail epic dating to the 1270s, in which Gog and Magog were two mountains enclosing these people. The author of the
Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-century best-seller, said he had found these Jews in Central Asia where as Gog and Magog they had been imprisoned by Alexander, plotting to escape and join with the Jews of Europe to destroy Christians. In the
Borgia map, a copper-engraved world map probably produced in
Southern Germany , the most eastern part contains two fortified regions depicting Gog and Magog, with the following Latin inscriptions: • :The province of Gog, in which the Jews were confined during the time of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians. • :Magog – in these two are large people and giants who are full of all kinds of bad behaviors. These Jews were collected by Artaxerxes from all parts of Persia. The Persian king Artaxerxes (either
Artaxerxes I or
Artaxerxes II, appearing in the
Book of Ezra 7) was commonly confused in medieval Europe with the Neo-Assyrian ruler
Shalmaneser V, who according to
2 Kings 17 drove the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel into exile.
Kievan Rus The twelfth-century chronicle
Primary Chronicle posited that the people of
Kievan Rus' were descendants of the biblical Japheth, son of Noah, and of the tribe of Magog. According to political scientist Christopher Marsh, "the implications" of being descendants of the tribe of Magog, depicted as being thrown out of heaven in the biblical Revelation of John, "apparently didn't matter to those drawing" the connection who believed that "[a]ncestors were found in the Bible, and that was enough", allegedly making the Rus' a chosen people of the Christian God. ==Modern apocalypticism==