CHAPTER 2

Alexander the Great and the Legacy of Sasanian Historiography

The yarn of Alexander and Darius is not

 A tale I have read. Do not ask me to relate

Aught but romances of fidelity and love.

Ḥāfiz¹

Introduction

In a verse concerning Alexander's search for the Water of Life, the Persian Sufi poet Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār (d. 1229) memorably complained:

Howsoever in this wilderness shall I find the Water of Life,

Since I'm lost like Alexander in the depths of darkness?

In the quest for what seems to be a Middle Persian Vorlage and the Aqua Vitae of historical certainty, we find ourselves similarly stranded in the wilderness and lost in darkness. We know that Arabic replaced Middle Persian after the Arab conquest (AD 636), and Sasanian literature came to be mainly rewritten in Arabic until the tenth century AD, when it began to be produced in Persian. In this situation practically all we can do is firstly examine the classical Arabic historiographical accounts written between the ninth and twelfth centuries in order to trace them back to their hypothetical origin, and secondly study Arabic sources that share motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition with the extant Persian versions; here we should focus on the influence of Sasanian historiography on Arabic historical sources, the origin and contents of a lost Sasanian chronicle, and the place of Alexander in the pre-Islamic Persian tradition. Benighted as we are, by studying Arabic accounts dating from the ninth to eleventh centuries, we may hopefully trace our way out of this vale of darkness back to a ‘Middle Persian’ version of the Alexander Romance.

No complete Arabic version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes has ever been found. It is assumed that ‘if indeed it had ever existed, it had been lost’. Instead, what we have in different historical and geographical accounts are only brief motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition. Although Doufikar-Aerts's study of Arabic sources relating to Alexander did shed new light on this tradition, she rightly preferred to place the Middle Persian out of the scope of her study.

Although no version of the Alexander Romance from the pre-Islamic Persian tradition has survived, the evidence of the Arabic and Persian sources that include selections from this work leaves no doubt that the legends about Alexander did exist in written form, at least in the Sasanian period. The Alexander Romance is mainly reflected in the works of early Islamic historians and geographers and in Persian versions of the Alexander Romance, in particular in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī. Some of the characteristics of these versions (such as proper names and Alexander's Persian ancestry) indicate a Middle Persian source. It is impossible to make stylistic judgements based on these details, but together they probably give an excellent idea of its content.

Early Arabic historical accounts of Alexander's life reflect a Middle Persian intermediary. In the works of the ninth to twelfth centuries, for example, the following common characteristics are visible:

(1)These sources deal with the history of Iran up to the Arab conquest, dividing it into four principal dynasties: the Pīshdādīyān (the first Persian kings), the Kayānīyān (Kayānids), the Ashkānīyān (Arsacids) and the Sasanians.

(2)Most of the authors of these sources are Iranian or of Iranian ancestry, which indicates that Persian sources were accessible to them.

(3)They all include Alexander in the Kayānid dynasty, making him the legitimate King of Iran and half-brother of Darius III (Dārā).

(4)The proper names mentioned in these sources indicate a Persian source and coincide with the equivalent names found in the Pahlavi texts (for instance Dārā for Darius III). They also contain certain Persian words or explanations based on the Persian meaning of a word, as will be discussed below.

(5)The oldest historical accounts do not apply the Islamic epithet Dhū'l-Qarnayn (‘the Two-Horned One’), mentioned in the Qur'ān, to Alexander. This indicates that their source predated the identification of Dhū'l-Qarnayn with Alexander during the Islamic period.

The Arabic works with the above-mentioned characteristics are the historical accounts of Dīnawarī (d. 895),² Ṭabarī (d. 923),³ the anonymous Nihāya⁴ (possibly d. c.850)⁵ and Thaʻālibī Nīshābūrī (d. 1038).⁶ This list does not include of course, the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, which is in Persian. In addition, Bīrūnī's (d. after 1050) brief mention of Alexander in the Āthār al-bāqīya (Chronology of Ancient Nations),⁷ Ḥamza Iṣfahānī's (d. after 961) On the Kings and Prophets⁸ and the geographical work Kitāb al-Buldān (Book of Countries) of Ibn al-Faqīh Hamadānī (d. c.903)⁹ provide some evidence for the existence of a Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance. The epithet Dhū'l-Qarnayn is not applied to Alexander by Dīnawarī, Ṭabarī or Firdawsī, which is very significant due to the identification of Alexander with this Qur'ānic figure in the Islamic period.¹⁰

In comparing these Arabic accounts in order to investigate and find any evidence for the existence of a Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance, we will follow the methodology applied by Professor Yarshater in his chapter on ‘Iranian National History’ in the Cambridge History of Iran¹¹ and Professor Khaleghi-Motlagh's article ‘From Shāhnāma to Khudāynāma: an inquiry into the direct and indirect sources of the Shāhnāma’.¹² In this way, the components of this lost version will be reconstructed by examining the common motifs mentioned by almost all of these Arabic works, as well as in the Persian Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.

Before analysing the content of Arabic accounts of Alexander, it is necessary to provide some background regarding the influence of Sasanian historiography in the Arabic tradition. In this respect, we need to address the following questions:

(1)Why do they have the same framework, dealing with Iranian history by dividing it into four principal dynasties?

(2)Why do they include Alexander among the Persian kings of the Kayānid cycle?

(3)Why do they use Persian proper names (such as Dārā for Darius)?

This chapter will attempt to give, or at least posit, probable answers to these questions, before discussing the development and sources of the Alexander Romance in the Arabo-Persian tradition.

Arabic Sources and Historical Tradition in Pre-Islamic Iran

Although no historical works survive from the pre-Islamic Persian tradition,¹³ the existence of divergent texts is attested by later sources, which point to different versions of an official chronicle relating the history of Iran, from its mythological beginnings (the creation of the world and the first man/king) up to the time of its compilation during the Sasanian period. This chronicle is known by the standard designation Khudāynāmag (in Middle Persian Xwadāy-nāmag, meaning the Book of Sovereigns, equivalent to the term Shāhnāma in New Persian).¹⁴ As to the date of this work, some scholars attribute its compilation to Khusraw I, Anūshīrvān (AD 531–79),¹⁵ though others, like Shahbazi, maintain that the compilation of a national history was already well under way at the time of the Sasanian king Bahrām Gūr (AD 421–38), and had definitely taken a coherent form by the time of Khusraw I.¹⁶ In any event, by the end of the sixth century AD, a national history of Iran existed in the royal archive at Ctesiphon, from which Agathias¹⁷ derived his account of Sasanian history.¹⁸

None of the Middle Persian versions of this great Sasanian chronicle have survived, but it survives in Arabic derivatives and, notably, in the Persian Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.¹⁹ An Arabic translation of this work is attested by later sources, which cite more than 20 versions of the chronicle,²⁰ called Sayr al-mulūk (Lives of the Kings) or Tārīkh al-mulūk (History of the Kings).²¹ Although all of these Arabic translations have also been lost, their content is known from the summaries of Arabic historiographers who based their histories of Iranians on this material. It is from this material in Arabic, and Persian adaptations of the ninth to eleventh centuries, as well as the remains of historical records, legends and myths in Avestan and Pahlavi texts, that a reconstruction of the contents of the lost Khudāynāmag has been undertaken.²²

The Khudāynāmag: Content and Sources

The Khudāynāmag has been the subject of a great number of investigations,²³ as it represents a historical tradition that combined myth, legend and factual history. Its origins can be traced to oral traditions relating to Avestan figures in north-eastern Persia, which assumed a national character with the spread of Zoroastrianism, and continued to be orally transmitted until towards the end of the Sassanid period, when they were committed to writing.²⁴

The compilers of the Khudāynāmag divided the Iranian past from the creation and appearance of the first man, into four dynastic periods, as has been attested by many Arabic historical accounts and the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.²⁵ Among these four dynasties, the second (that of the Kayānids or Kayānīyān) is of most interest because it ends in Alexander's conquest. It is noteworthy that among these four dynasties there is no mention of the Achaemenids. The omission of the Medes and Achaemenids from the accounts of Persian history has given risen to certain theories among scholars.

Some decades ago, the great Iranian scholar Ehsan Yarshater published an article in which he discussed why the Medes and Achaemenids did not appear in the Shāhnāma.²⁶ He argued that the Sasanians were unaware of the Achaemenids and did not have any historical memory of them; and if the Sasanians were heirs to anyone, it was the Parthians (247 BC–AD 224).²⁷ Shahbazi argued that the early Sasanians did know about the Achaemenids, but for ideological reasons – especially during the time of Shāpūr II (AD 309–79) – they claimed to be the descendants of the kings in the Avesta (in particular the Kayānids) rather than the Achaemenids.²⁸ This debate has been recently revisited and re-examined by Touraj Daryaee, who explains the omission of the Achaemenids from the official history as being a consequence of the nature of Iranian historiography.²⁹ Daryaee rightly claims that the ‘Sasanians did not forget, but must have ignored the Achaemenids purposefully to construct a sacred history which connected them not to the Achaemenids, but to the Kayanids. This meant a construction of the past which was sacred and removed from the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition.’³⁰ A similar pattern may be seen in the development of Christian Roman historiography, where Christianity became a focal point and a background to the history of the late Roman Empire.³¹

Therefore, in the history of Iran, the Achaemenid dynasty was replaced with the Kayānid dynastic cycle, into which the episode of Alexander was incorporated. It is worth briefly examining the origin of the Kayānid cycle of epic and Alexander's place within this dynasty. Boyce³² and Tafaḍḍulī³³ both traced the Kayānid cycle back to Parthian times. Macuch also points out that:

The central position of the pahlawāns, ‘champions’ or ‘heroes’ or ‘Parthians’ in the original sense of the word, and the outstanding features attributed to the House of Kārēn [one of the Parthian families] in the national epic indicate that members of important families, who claimed descent from the Arsacid house, had created a version³⁴ of the national history favourable towards themselves.³⁵

Pourshariati has also studied the influence of Parthian families on the creation of an Iranian ‘national history’.³⁶ She points out that the production of two of the most authoritative versions of the Khudāynāmag, namely the Shāhnāma of Abū Manṣūr (in prose) and the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī (completed in verse in 1010),³⁷ cannot be understood except in the context of their patronage by families of Parthian ancestry, or at least by families with pretensions to this ancestry, in the tenth century AD.³⁸

Why, it may be asked, is the Parthian influence relevant to the appearance of Alexander in the Kayānid cycle? It is simply because the clue to understanding such a vast variety of legends on Alexander in the Persian tradition must be sought in the Parthian period. From the material culture, mainly the coinage, it appears that the Arsacids called themselves Philhellenos (φιλɛλληνος).³⁹ Their philhellenism is also brought to fore in the legends on their coins, which were usually in Greek.⁴⁰ In this context, it is worth pointing out that according to Tacitus (Annals, 6.31), the Arsacid king Ardawān II legitimised his claim over Roman territories by associating himself with Alexander and the Seleucids on the one hand, and with the Achaemenids on the other.⁴¹

In addition, in a recent study Daryaee points out the Arsacids’ Irano-Hellenic cultural setting represented in a Middle Persian manuscript (MU29),⁴² in which they are connected with Alexander and his legacy in Iran.⁴³ Thus, if we consider the possibility that Alexander's positive image in Persian literature has its origin in the Parthian period, the divergence between Alexander's negative image in the Zoroastrian tradition reflected in the Pahlavi texts⁴⁴ and his positive character in the national epic (that is, the Khudāynāmag tradition, as this book endeavours to prove) makes better sense. However, this is just a hypothesis because unfortunately no known Parthian-language literature survives in its original form,⁴⁵ since the Parthian tradition was an oral one, and being bardic in nature it was usually sung or recited with music by court minstrels called Gōsāns.⁴⁶ The discrepancies in the characterisation of Alexander between the Kayānid and Sasanian parts of the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī⁴⁷ may also be explained by the different sources (Parthian and Sasanian) of these two parts and the existence of more than one Khudāynāmag tradition.⁴⁸

It has long been recognised that various Khudāynāmag traditions were incorporated into classical Arabic histories that were composed in the ninth and tenth centuries.⁴⁹ The Khudāynāmag chronicles played an important role in Arabic historiography, especially in the ‘Abbāsid period.⁵⁰ These Arabic accounts will be examined below in order to reconstruct the content of Alexander's appearance in the Khudāynāmag; this will only include the extant Arabic histories of the first centuries of the Islamic era (the ninth to twelfth centuries), which, it can be deduced, used a derivation of the Khudāynāmag as their source. The majority of the authors of these Arabic histories were Persians who wrote in Arabic. The Sasanian sources were therefore available to them, though indirectly.

Beside these Arabic accounts – those of Dīnawarī, Ṭabarī, Bīrūnī and Iṣfahānī, as well as Tha‘ālibī's Ghurar akhbār and the anonymous Nihāya – where needed, Firdawsī's Shāhnāma (in Persian) is also included here, as it is the most representative source for the Khudāynāmag tradition. However, since the passages on Alexander in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, being the first complete and most extensive representation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition in the Islamic world, is worthy of an independent analysis, this will be studied in detail in the next chapter. The following sections examine different motifs in the Alexander Romance found in these Arabic histories from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition.

Alexander's Persian Ancestry and the Etymology of His Name

The first thing that Arabic historical accounts deal with is different traditions concerning Alexander's ancestry. In his Kitāb al-Akhbār al-ṭawāl (Book of Extensive Histories), Dīnawarī (d. 895) offers one of the fullest accounts of the Alexander Romance written during the Islamic era. Dīnawarī discusses at length the Persian variant of Alexander's ancestry.

He mentions that ‘the people of Fārs’ believe that Alexander was the son of Dārā and Philip's daughter. According to Dīnawarī, in a war between the Persian king Dārā, son of Bahman, and Philip [Fīlifūs], the latter was defeated. Philip agreed to pay an annual tribute of one hundred thousand golden eggs, and gave his daughter in marriage to Dārā. The Persian king detected an unpleasant odour on Philip's daughter, and had her cured with a herb called sandar. The night he was supposed to consummate the marriage with the Greek princess, he smelled the herb and cried out ‘āl sandar’, which means ‘the sandar is strong’ because, according to Dīnawarī, ‘āl’ in Persian means ‘strong’.⁵¹ Dārā thus eventually lost interest in her and sent her back to Rūm, unaware of her pregnancy. She gave birth to a boy and called him ‘Ali[k]sandar’ (āl+ sandar).⁵² The explanation given by Dīnawarī is very close to Alexander's name in Middle Persian: Aleksandar. This etymology of his name gradually became obsolete in later sources, where the herb was simply turned into ‘iskandar’, as we will see below.

This must have been at the heart of Alexander's legend in the Khudāynāmag tradition, for it is repeated in sources, with some variation. Ṭabarī's (d. 932) Tārīkh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk (History of Prophets and Kings) contains four different versions of Alexander's name and ancestry.⁵³ In the third version, Ṭabarī's account reports material from sources he claims are ‘told by persons knowledgeable about the stories of the ancients’. He reports that Alexander and Dārā were brothers, and Alexander's mother was Philip's daughter Halāy.⁵⁴ She married the Persian king Dārā the Great (Dārā al-akbar), son of Bahman, after Philip was defeated in a war. Ṭabarī's etymology of Alexander's name explains that he was named after the herb sandarūs, which cured his mother's bad breath. According to Ṭabarī, the origin of his name is ‘Halāy-Sandarūs’, which became Iskandarūs.⁵⁵

The anonymous author of the Nihāya, in agreement with other historians whose source was a derivation of Khudāynāmag, places Alexander within the Kayānid dynasty. The passage on Alexander is handed down by the author in the name of Ibn al-Muqaffaʻ, which indicates that he probably had access to the Arabic translation of the Khudāynāmag rendered by Ibn al-Muqaffaʻ.⁵⁶ It begins with a story about Alexander's Persian descent, although the author remarks that Arabs do not agree with Persians about Alexander's ancestry. The author adds that the people of Rūm believe that Alexander was the son of Fīlibūs (Philip). Here, the herb that cured Alexander's mother is simply called ‘iskandar’,⁵⁷ as it is in Firdawsī's account, where it burnt her palate.⁵⁸ Stoneman suggests that the word might be σκάνδιξ‘σκα´νδιξ’ (chervil, a relative of parsley),⁵⁹ while Grignaschi suggests sandal, the well-known fragrant wood, which in the Pahlavi script can be read as sandar.⁶⁰ Then again, Warner argues that the word derived either from the Greek σkópoδov (garlic) or the Latin ascalonium (shallot).⁶¹ According to Dihkhudā, sandar or sandarūs is of Greek origin, from ‘σανδαράκη’, and is identified as the Arar tree, which produces a yellow resin.⁶²

Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī's Āthār al-bāqīya (Chronology of Ancient Nations), written in AD 1000, also contains the Persian descent variant mentioned above, although he claimed: ‘That Alexander was the son of Philip is a fact too evident to be concealed.’⁶³

In any case, through such creative elaborations in the Persian tradition, Alexander becomes the son of Dārā(b), son of Bahman Ardaxshīr, son of Isfandīyār. This invented Persian genealogy of Alexander links him firstly to the greatest Persian kings (such as Bahman Ardaxshīr/Artaxerxes I),⁶⁴ and secondly to Isfandīyār, the great hero of Iranian epic who, like Alexander, had a Greek mother and was the grandson of a ‘Caesar of Rūm’.⁶⁵ This genealogy legitimised Alexander's kingship as a Persian of the Kayānid dynasty.

The legend of Alexander's birth contains certain symbols that show the double attitude of the Persian world towards the Macedonian king. In the Avestic tradition, bad odours (gantāy/gaintī) are related to Ahrīman,⁶⁶ with whom Alexander is associated in Pahlavi sources. Furthermore, the identification of the herb sandar/iskandar as garlic, ‘which was so esteemed by the Iranians as a medicine and a means of warding off the evil eye and demonic power’,⁶⁷ can be interpreted from the point of view that the bad breath of Alexander's mother is a sign of the ahrīmanī (demoniac) character of Alexander. According to Davis, since Alexander's mother is a Greek, the bad odour can also be linked with two Greek festivals (the Skirophoria and Thesmophoria),⁶⁸ which associated a ritual sexual abstinence with the stinking breath of the female partner.⁶⁹

Davis also draws attention to historical data that may have influenced the invention of Alexander's Persian ancestry. In the fifth century BC, a Macedonian princess married a Persian. Her brother, who was the king of Macedonia at the time, was named Alexander.⁷⁰ Davis argues that it is possible that this story of Macedonian–Persian intermarriage involving a king of Macedonia named Alexander, was then combined with the patriotic stratagem of the Pseudo-Callisthenes to produce its own version of Alexander's paternity.⁷¹

In the above-mentioned Arabic accounts, the proper names are of Persian origin. Some of them also coincide with their equivalents in Pahlavi sources. For instance, Darius III is represented as Dārā-i Dārāyān (Dārā, son of Dārā). According to Firdawsī, Alexander's mother is named Nāhīd, which is the modern Persian form of the name of the goddess Ānāhītā.⁷² Ṭabarī gives the name of Alexander's ‘wondrous steed’ as Būkefārasb,⁷³ which ends with the Persian asb (horse). In conclusion, the invented etymology of Alexander's name indicates a Persian source, although it is difficult to decipher the original Middle Persian origin of the name. This etymology, which makes him a legitimate king of a Persian dynasty by linking him to the greatest kings such as Artaxerxes I and Darius the Great, must have originated in the Khudāynāmag tradition represented in Arabic histories and the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.

Iskandar Rūmī, Alexander the Roman

In Middle Persian Zoroastrian writings and in the Arabic accounts discussed here, Alexander the Great figures with the epithet hrōmāyīg/rūmī (Roman). According to Touraj Daryaee, it was the effects of Roman propaganda from the time of Caracalla to Alexander Severus that brought into existence an initial ‘Alexander’ story and memory, in which imitatio Alexandri played a central role and galvanised a Persian Alexander tradition, which lasted to the end of the Sasanian period.⁷⁴ The appearance of this epithet in historical Arabic accounts must have been due to the influence of Middle Persian writings too. It seems that the effects of the imitatio Alexandri of the Roman emperors in the second and third centuries AD on Middle Persian literature, also has a consequence for Arabo-Persian historical memory in the Islamic period. This explains the association of Alexander with the epithet rūmī in Arabic and Persian texts (Hrōmīg – Roman – in Middle Persian, that is, the Roman foe) as an influence of the Sasanian period.

The Tribute of Golden Eggs

According to Arabic histories and to Firdawsī as well, Philip paid his annual tribute to the Persian king Dārā(b) in the form of golden eggs. After Dārā(b)’s death, his son, named Dārā, ascended the throne and wrote a letter to Alexander, demanding the tribute that Philip used to pay. Alexander, who had succeeded his own father, refused to pay the tribute and replied that ‘the hen that laid the golden eggs had died’. In fact, this sentence, which is repeated in all versions (and in particularly detailed accounts by Ṭabarī⁷⁵ and Firdawsī),⁷⁶ corresponds to the Syriac Alexander Romance.⁷⁷ Curiously, although there is no war between Philip and the Persian king mentioned in the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes, the tribute of the golden eggs is mentioned there (I, 23). According to the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes, when Alexander returned from Methone and went to visit his father, Philip, he saw Darius's ambassadors asking for the tribute of ‘one hundred golden eggs, each weighing 20 pounds of solid gold’. According to the Shāhnāma, the golden eggs numbered ‘one hundred thousand, each one weighing forty mithqāl’ (roughly 6 oz or 170 g).⁷⁸ According to Arabic accounts and the Shāhnāma, Alexander's refusal to pay the tribute caused the war between Dārā and Alexander.⁷⁹

Exchange of Symbolic Gifts

After the well-known sentence ‘I have slain the hen that used to lay those eggs’, some sources add a passage on the symbolic exchange of gifts between Dārā and Alexander. The origin of the motif of symbolic gifts is rather confusing (whether it was included in the Khudāynāmag or not) because it is absent from Dīnawarī's account and the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, while Ṭabarī, the Nihāya and the Ghurar of Tha‘ālibī contain it.⁸⁰ In the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes (I, 36), Darius sends gifts – a whip, a ball and a chest of gold – along with a letter. However, the passage in Arabic accounts bears a great resemblance to the Syriac Pseudo-Callisthenes.⁸¹ In the Nihāya, the author adds two more gifts: a golden coffin and a pure pearl.⁸² The episode is seen in Ṭabarī's History⁸³ and in the Syriac Pseudo-Callisthenes too.⁸⁴

The answer to the question as to why this passage is absent from the Shāhnāma and Dīnawarī's Akhbār can be found in Ṭabarī's account. As mentioned before, Ṭabarī includes four different variants on Alexander's history. The motif of symbolic gifts appears in a different version from the one in which the Persian descent variant is mentioned. The first variant is credited to ‘a source other than Hishām’,⁸⁵ while the second is based on ‘some authorities on ancient history … those who say that Alexander was the brother of Dārā the Younger and the son of Dārā the Elder’.⁸⁶ Furthermore, it is likely that in the source in which Alexander is said to have possessed Persian ancestry, the motif of symbolic gifts does not appear, so it is also likely that this motif is not in the Khudāynāmag. It seems that this motif was incorporated into the version with the Persian ancestry afterwards, and thus it appears in Tha‘ālibī's Ghurar, the Nihāya, the Sharafnāma of Niẓāmī and Bal‘amī's History. This indicates that Firdawsī and Dīnawarī were working with an older source.⁸⁷ In Arabic accounts, the word ‘whip’, whatever it was in their original source, is translated as a ‘polo mallet’. Ṭabarī used the word ṣawlajān, which is an Arabised form of chawgān, the Persian word for ‘polo’.⁸⁸ It is worth mentioning that two recensions of the Hebrew Alexander Romance⁸⁹ translated from the same Arabic exemplar⁹⁰ used this Arabic word, adding the explanation that this is ‘the stick with which young men engage in sport’, implying that the Arabic exemplar had al-ṣawlajān here.⁹¹ It is not clear how the ‘whip’ turned into a ‘polo mallet’, but once it was translated from Syriac, the word appears as the Arabised Persian word chawgān (polo), as it does in the Hebrew version. Due to the Persian origin of chawgān, and the fact that it fits very well in the context of ‘playing’, the Arabic intermediary may be based on a Middle Persian Vorlage.

The Battles between Alexander and Darius

While the Greek Alexander Romance only describes the actual battle at Gaugamela, the Arabic and Persian accounts give more details. The anonymous Nihāya and Ibn al-Faqīh Hamadānī report that in preparation for battle, Dārā lodged his family in the city of Hamadān, in what is now western Iran.⁹² According to one of the traditions mentioned by Ṭabarī, the contenders met in the Jazīra,⁹³ and battled there for a year. Firdawsī mentions the bank of the Euphrates⁹⁴ as the first battlefield. According to Firdawsī and the Nihāya, there were three battles between Alexander and Dārā.⁹⁵ In the Shāhnāma, the poet's emphasis on historical information is remarkable. It seems very important for the poet to report where each detail happened. For example, the royal treasure was located in Jahrum,⁹⁶ the royal family resided in Iṣfahān and Alexander was crowned in Iṣṭakhr (with a Kayānī crown). There is no such interest in the Greek and Syriac versions.

Darius's Murderers

All the Arabic and Persian accounts, along with the Greek and Syriac version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes,⁹⁷ agree that Darius was murdered by his own men. Disagreement emerges, however, over whether his assassins were generals (sarhang), Zoroastrian priests (mubad),⁹⁸ chamberlains (ḥājib)⁹⁹ or ministers (vazīr, dastūr).¹⁰⁰ According to Ṭabarī and Dīnawarī, they were guards from Hamadān (Ecbatana).¹⁰¹ Firdawsī mentions their names as Jānūspār (or Jānūshyār) and Māhyār.¹⁰² Khaleghi-Motlagh identifies the name ‘Jānūspār’ as the Middle Persian gyān-abespār, which means ‘bodyguard, soldier’.¹⁰³ Bīrūnī also affirms that Dārā was killed by his chief bodyguard, Nawjushānas, son of Ādharbakht.¹⁰⁴

Firdawsī and the Nihāya affirm that Darius's murderers acted on their own in order to gain Alexander's favour and good grace, while Dīnawarī, Niẓāmī and Bal‘amī report that Alexander agreed to make a compact with the murderers, but having arranged a deal with the generals to have Darius murdered, repented of the agreement and instead punished the traitors. Ṭabarī reports both versions.¹⁰⁵ In the Nihāya, Alexander tricks them into making themselves known, with the clever pretext that ‘they will be elevated above the armies’. When Alexander wants to punish them, they protest. Alexander responds: ‘I elevate you by hanging you.’¹⁰⁶

Alexander Weeps at Dārā's Deathbed

A well-known motif from the Pseudo-Callisthenes is the scene in which Alexander finds the dying Darius, hears his last words and laments his death (II, 20).¹⁰⁷ Bīrūnī affirms that Alexander called Dārā ‘brother’.¹⁰⁸ Many details of this passage in the Arabic and Persian versions stick closely to the version in the Greek Romance. For instance, Alexander's sentence begins in a similar way in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī and in the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes:

The Greek Romance: ‘Placing his hands on Darius's breast, he spoke these words, pregnant with pity: ‘Stand up, King Darius. Rule your land and become master of yourself. Receive back your crown and rule your Persian people.’¹⁰⁹

 The Shāhnāma of Firdawsī: ‘Alexander places Darius's head on his knees … and says: ‘Stand up and sit on [your] golden throne … I shall restore your kingdom to you.’¹¹⁰

Although this poignant scene is based on the Greek Alexander Romance, what is perhaps particularly interesting here is that the story hardly seems to have any motivation in the narrative of the Pseudo-Callisthenes; the incident (Alexander's pained reaction to the death of Darius) comes as a surprise. In contrast, in the Arabic and Persian accounts Alexander's reaction is given an elaborate motive: he is crying because of the death of his brother. Thus, although the Arabic versions and Firdawsī's Shāhnāma were composed in a far later historical period, the tale of Darius's death seems to be more fully integrated into these texts, while the tale of Alexander's sorrow is less so in the Alexander Romance.¹¹¹

Dārā's Last Will

In the Greek Romance (II, 20), Darius asks Alexander to bury him with his own hands; he also commits his mother and wife to Alexander, and gives his daughter Roxana¹¹² to Alexander as a wife. To these personal deathbed gestures, the Arabic and Persian sources mentioned in this chapter add others that might seem to belong purely to a Persian version, since they make Alexander out to be the legitimate successor of the dying king. According to Ṭabarī, Dārā requests that Alexander ‘should marry his daughter Rawshanak, and perpetuate Persian nobility and not to impose foreign rule upon the Persian nobility’.¹¹³

In the Shāhnāma, Dārā expresses the hope that a descendant of Alexander and Rawshanak will re-establish the glory of Zoroastrian feasts and customs. This passage shows Firdawsī's knowledge of the important Iranian feasts, and also mentions important figures in the Zoroastrian tradition, such as the great hero Isfandīyār and King Gushtāsp:

Of her you might have a famous descendant who would revive the name of Isfandiyār, tend the fire of Zoroaster, gather up the Zand-Avesta, observe the presages and feast of Sada, also the glory of Nawrūz, of the fire temple and the feast of Mihrigān. He would wash his soul and face with the water of wisdom. He would revive the rites of Luhrāsp and follow the religion of Gushtāsp [Zoroastrianism].¹¹⁴

Alexander's Translations

According to Ṭabarī, Alexander destroyed Persian fire temples, killed Zoroastrian priests and burned their books.¹¹⁵ He remarks: ‘it is said that Alexander carried away the books of knowledge of the people of Persia, comprising their sciences, astronomy and philosophy after translating them into Syriac and the rūmī language’.¹¹⁶

The report about Alexander's acts of pillage and the translation of Persian books into Greek is derived from the late Sasanian period (in the early seventh century AD), recorded in various Middle Persian writings¹¹⁷ and Arabic works. For instance, according to the Book of Nativities (Kitāb al-Mawālīd), ‘when Alexander conquered the kingdom of Dārā the King, he had them all translated into the Greek language. Then he burnt the original copies which were kept in the treasure-houses of Dārā, and killed everyone whom he thought might be keeping away any of them.’¹¹⁸ Another example of the transmission of the Zoroastrian sciences is presented by Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht in his Book of Nahmuṭān on the Nativities:

He [Alexander] had, however, copies made of whatever was collected in the archives and treasuries of Iṣṭakhr [Persepolis] and translated into Byzantine [Greek] and Coptic. After he was finished with copying whatever he needed from that [material], he burned what was written in Persian … These books, along with the rest of the sciences, property, treasures, and learned men that he came upon, he sent to Egypt.¹¹⁹

Another variant of this tale is narrated by Ḥamza Iṣfahānī (d. after 961), according to which Alexander burned the Persian books after their translation into Greek because ‘he envied the fact that [the Persians] had gathered together sciences the like of which no other nation had ever gathered’.¹²⁰

According to these sources, any Greek book is by definition part of the Zoroastrian canon; and hence the translation and study of Greek works would mean recovering ancient Persian knowledge. As Daryaee rightly points out, ‘these narratives suggest that there was probably a construction of an “Alexander plunder” story in the Sasanian period, elaborated and used by the Persians to justify the incorporation of “foreign” knowledge in the name of replacing the Persian heritage stolen or destroyed by Alexander’.¹²¹

King Frīdūn's Sons

Ṭabarī mentions a source in which Alexander speaks of ‘close relations’ between Dārā and himself. Ṭabarī adds: ‘He meant, so this source maintained, the closeness between Salm and Īraj, the sons of Afrīdhūn.’¹²² We come across this story in Middle Persian texts. It relates the division of the world by King Frīdūn among his three sons. He divided his kingdom (the world) between his sons, Salm, Tūr and Īraj. Īraj was given the best land (Irānshahr), while Salm ruled over the land of Rūm (Anatolia) and Tūr ruled the land of Turkistān (Central Asia).¹²³

Thus, as Alexander rightly maintained, according to this story, the Persian kings and the kings of Rūm are indeed relatives, both descending from the same king (Frīdūn). Ṭabarī is the only historian who quotes this anecdote, which is very important in the epic tradition. Hence, according to Persian tradition, even if Alexander and Dārā were not brothers, they were still related, being descendants of King Frīdūn. In any case, Alexander's kingship was legitimised in the epic tradition of ancient Persia by a variety of sources.

Alexander's Speech on his Accession to the Throne of Persia

According to the Shāhnāma, when Alexander acceded to the throne of Persia, he gave a speech and wrote a letter to the Persian nobles.¹²⁴ The contents of his letter and speech legitimised his rule as a Persian king. According to Tafaḍḍulī, this type of speech on the occasion of accession to a throne is a stylistic characteristic of the Khudāynāmag.¹²⁵ Throughout the Arabic and Persian historical accounts there are examples of kings making speeches on ascending the throne, in particular the Sasanian kings.¹²⁶

Alexander's Adventures

Some other motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition appear in the Arabic accounts mentioned in this chapter, and will also be discussed in detail in later chapters. Dinawarī mentions Alexander's journey to India, the single combat between Alexander and Porus (the Indian king), the episode with Queen Candace (here called Qandāqa), Alexander's journeys to the Land of Darkness, to China and to the Land of Women (the Amazons), as well as his journey to Mecca.¹²⁷ Ṭabarī also cited a number of these motifs from the Alexander Romance. After the campaign in India, for instance, he relates Alexander's journeys to China and to the Land of Darkness in search of the Water of Life.¹²⁸

The Nihāya also contains a passage on the Indian king Porus and his duel with Alexander, as well as an account of Alexander's journey to Mecca, an extensive episode concerning Queen Qandāfa (Candace), a Brahman story and the story of the Amazons. Some other motifs from the letter to Aristotle also appear in this book: tales of monsters, a talking tree and a version of the episode of the temple of Dionysus. The journey to China is also mentioned.¹²⁹

Firdawsī's Shāhnāma, which contains the most extensive narrative on Alexander's adventures, will be examined in the next chapter. Firdawsī's work is a crucial source for casting light on whether these adventures were a part of the Khudāynāmag or added afterwards during the Islamic period.

Alexander, Founder of Cities

In Arabic and Persian sources, Alexander is recorded as the founder of many important cities, especially in Central Asia. According to the Greek Alexander Romance, he founded 12 cities (III, 35). In the Syriac Romance, 13 are enumerated.¹³⁰ Dīnawarī reports the foundation of 12 cities, in agreement with the Nihāya and Ṭabarī. Ṭabarī also adds that each of them was named after Alexander (for instance, three in Khurāsān were Hirāt, Merv and Samarqand).

Tribal Kingdoms

According to Dīnawarī, Alexander feared that the nations whose kings he had killed would rebel when he died, and he therefore decided to slay the nobles of Iran. Following Aristotle's counsel, he divided Iran among the tribal princes.¹³¹ This political division of the Persian Empire is attested by Middle Persian texts as the destruction of the unity of the Persian kingdom, with Alexander ‘splintering it into a number of feudal orders’ (kadag-xwādāy);¹³² Arabic and Persian sources also describe ‘the kings of the territorial divisions’ (mulūk al-ṭawā'if).¹³³

This frequently recorded tradition was the official Sasanian reckoning, and is attested by both Arabic historical accounts and the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.¹³⁴

Alexander's Death

In the Greek Alexander Romance, Alexander is said to have died in Babylon, poisoned, after having lived only 32 years (III, 35). In the Syriac Alexander Romance, he had lived only 32 years and seven months when he died in Babylon (III, XXIV).¹³⁵ According to Ṭabarī and Bīrūnī, Alexander died in a city near Babylon called Shahrazūr. This may be the city identified in the Syriac Khuzistān Chronicle as ‘Bāgniqyā’ in the Babylon area.¹³⁶ The Arabic and Persian sources both agree that Alexander died of an illness, but they disagree on his age when he died. Table 2.1 displays the main motifs presented in each source.

It is clear that certain motifs in the Middle Persian tradition acquired a specific form that distinguished them from other traditions. Taking Dīnawarī, the anonymous Nihāya, Firdawsī, Thaʻālibī and Ṭabarī as the main bases for this account, the contents of the Alexander Romance in the Middle Persian tradition will be summarised in the following section.

Table 2.1 Motifs of the Alexander Romance in Arabic and Persian Sources

Alexander the Great in the Khudāynāmag

As we have seen in the first two sections of this chapter, early Islamic historiography, composed by authors of Iranian origin, not only was influenced by the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition, but also contained various motifs (such as Alexander's Persian ancestry) that must have been based on a Middle Persian source. These motifs indicate that the legendary life of Alexander was adopted into the general body of the Iranian historical tradition.¹³⁷ The Iranian adaption of the Romance not only accepts the positive image of Alexander, but also links him to the last Kayānid kings by making the first Dārā his father and the second Dārā his half-brother, thus bestowing upon him the legitimacy of kingship. Judging from the common motifs discussed in this chapter, we can assume that the episode of Alexander's deeds and ancestry in the Khudāynāmag may have run as follows:

Philip was defeated by the Persian king Dārā and accepted to pay an annual tribute in the form of golden eggs. He also gave his daughter in marriage to the Persian king. However, Dārā lost interest in her because she had bad breath. She was cured by a herb that in the Greek language was called sandar (or a similar word). She was sent back to Rūm without revealing that she was pregnant. There, she gave birth to a son whom she named after the herb that cured her bad breath. Philip accepted the child as his own and engaged Aristotle as his tutor. When Philip died, Alexander ascended the throne of Rūm.

 After sending back the Greek princess, Dārā had another son with another woman and gave him his own name, Dārā. The son then ascended the throne when his father, the first Dārā, died. He sent ambassadors to Alexander in order to claim the annual tribute. Alexander refused and said: ‘The hen that used to lay the golden eggs has died, thus there is no tribute to pay.’

 This caused war between the two brothers. Alexander bribed two men of Hamadān who were Dārā's guards, and induced them to kill the Persian king. Thus, Dārā was killed by his own guards. Alexander found the dying king and heard his last words. Dārā asked him to marry his daughter Rawshanak, preserve the Iranian feasts and noble families, and punish his murderers.

 Alexander buried Dārā according to Persian custom, punished the murderers and married Rawshanak. He sent a letter to the Persian nobles and made a speech on ascending the throne, which was the custom among the Persian kings. In his speech and letter, he legitimised his claim as the rightful King of Persia. Then he ordered the translation of Persian books into Greek and sent them to Rūm.

 He built many cities, among which Samarqand, Merv and Bukhāra had a vivid memory of their founder. When he knew that his death was near, he wanted to kill the Persian nobles because he was afraid of their rebellion. But Aristotle advised him to separate the Persian Empire into local kingdoms, inaugurating the period known as kadag-xwadāy in Middle Persian.

Something like this summary of Alexander's deeds and ancestry must have been included in the Khudāynāmag because all the Arabic historical accounts mentioned in this chapter more or less repeat it.¹³⁸ However, the question as to whether other motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition (such as the battle with the Indian king Porus and the search for the Water of Life) existed in the Sasanian Khudāynāmag, or whether they were incorporated into Arabic historical accounts after the Arab conquest, remains unanswered and is a matter of controversy among scholars. In this regard, there are two principal theories:

(1)Khaleghi-Motlagh, following Nöldeke's hypothesis, believes that the Khudāynāmag did not contain the account of Alexander (as reflected in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī), but that it was an independent work translated from Middle Persian to Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘.¹³⁹ He affirms that this Arabic translation was based on the Middle Persian version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, as argued by Nöldeke.

(2)Tafaḍḍulī and Boyce both affirm that ‘the compilers of the Khudāynāmag used written foreign sources … notably a Syriac version of the Alexander Romance’.¹⁴⁰

But Tafaḍḍulī and Boyce do not specify why and how they reached such a conclusion. If there had been a Middle Persian translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, as Nöldeke argued, why would they need the Syriac translation?

Conclusion: The Origin and Development of the Alexander Romance in the Arabo-Persian Tradition

In this chapter, we have tried to clarify what the basic issues are in the study of the influence of Sasanian historiography on the Arabic historical sources of the Alexander Romance, based on the historical background of the translation movement in the Sasanian period. From this analysis, we can draw several conclusions.

Firstly, we may conclude that legends concerning Alexander the Great must have existed in the Iranian world from the Parthian period.¹⁴¹ The era of Khusraw Anūshirvān (Chosroes I, r. 531–79) must be considered the time when these oral legends were amalgamated with the Alexander Romance and were written down by the authors of the Khudāynāmag, mainly because this is when Khusraw I accepted refugees from the Eastern Roman Empire when Justinian closed the Neoplatonist schools of Athens in 529.¹⁴² There were also refugees from Alexandria in Egypt, where curiously the Alexander Romance originated. Khusraw I's welcome of these refugees could be the moment when the Alexander Romance entered the Persian tradition and completed a part of the history of Iran.¹⁴³ Stoneman and Daryaee also affirm that it is likely that the Greek tale became known to Persians as a result of the interest of this Sasanian king.¹⁴⁴ It is furthermore possible that the Syriac Alexander Romance was also translated under the patronage of Khusraw I. It is curious that Budge mentions that Syriac was not the translator's native language.¹⁴⁵

In addition, there are other pieces of evidence for the possibility that the Syriac translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes was undertaken in the Sasanian court. For one, every time we find the names of the Achaemenid kings they are referred to with the title Khusraw.¹⁴⁶ For instance, Xerxes is referred to in the Syriac version by the name of Khusraw, and Darius assumes titles that were used by Shābuhr II after the fourth century AD.¹⁴⁷ Nevertheless, it is likely that the Syriac and the Middle Persian versions were prepared almost at the same time and probably in the same court, but for different audiences and different purposes.¹⁴⁸ Furthermore, the Middle Persian version was modified and included in the Khudāynāmag in order to create a continuous history of Iran.

Secondly, the enormous variety of works on Alexander the Great in the Islamic world indicates that the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition was translated into Arabic through two different channels:

(1)It is likely that the historical accounts (the tārīkh genre) that include Alexander among the Persian kings and claim that he was Dārā's brother, are based on the Middle Persian translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes. This translation was included in the Sasanian chronicle Khudāynāmag (The Book of Sovereigns), and was then translated into Arabic as Sayr al-Mulūk in the eighth century AD, the most well known of which was the Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ translation. We can claim such a conclusion because the oldest representations of the Alexander Romance (those by Dīnawarī and Ṭabarī, and the Nihāya) include it as part of Persian history. Alexander's tale is always referenced with the Kayānids, and there is no independent version of this work until after the twelfth century AD.

(2)The Pseudo-Callisthenes account was also translated into Arabic directly from Syriac, possibly in the ninth century AD.¹⁴⁹ This was the source for the works (including the Mujamal al-tavārīkh and the Ethiopian version) that contained motifs such as the tale of Nectanebo and the foundation of Alexandria.

Thirdly, there is no doubt that the Arabic translation of the Khudāynāmag by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ contained the Alexander episode – through which it became known to historians of the ninth and tenth centuries AD – because the Nihāya quotes Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ at the beginning of the passage on Alexander.¹⁵⁰ In addition, we have the testimony of the anonymous Tārīkh-i Sīstān (The Sīstān Chronicle),¹⁵¹ which reports:

Iskandar Rūmī, after Dārā's death and his marriage with Rawshanak, Dārā's daughter, decided to go to India. First he went to Sīstān and decided to build a castle, where there is another one built by Ardashīr Bābakān. Iskandar remained there for seven days … but left Rawshanak in the castle until he returned from India. When he returned, the castle was finished. So he remained there one month and claimed: ‘This castle must be named ark.’ And ark in the rūmī language¹⁵² means ‘fort’ and this is the reason why the castle of Sīstān is called ‘Ark’ [Arg]. This account is attested by various sources: one in Akhbār-i Sīstān, and another in Ibn al-Muqaffaʻ’s Sayr al-mulūk ʻajam.¹⁵³

The Nihāya and the Tārīkh-i Sīstān therefore prove that the Arabic translation of the Khudāynāmag of Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ contained accounts of Alexander.

The ensuing chapters of this book will help to clarify the complex development of the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition in Persian literature. The next chapter in particular will discuss the various hypotheses mentioned above (by Boyce, Tafaḍḍulī and Khaleghi-Motlagh) regarding whether the Pseudo-Callisthenes was included in the Khudāynāmag and through which language (Syriac or Middle Persian). The Shāhnāma of Firdawsī features some characteristics of the Alexander Romance that did not survive in any other source and thus helps to clarify these questions. Furthermore, Firdawsī's grand poetic narrative of the history of ancient Persia, as we will see, is a valuable source in which it is possible to trace the ‘missing link’ between the appearance of the Pseudo-Callisthenes' version of the Alexander Romance in Alexandria in the third century AD and its reappearance in Khurāsān (in ancient Parthia) in the tenth century AD.