Conclusion

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To each and every one their just due:

 Thus Alexander's lot was a looking glass

 And Khiḍr was granted the Aqua Vitae.

Ṣā'ib Tabrīzī (d. 1676)1

The Greek Alexander Romance originated in Alexandria (Egypt) in the third century AD and became the most influential source for the deeds and adventures of Alexander the Great, especially in the East. It took up Alexander's dreams and longings and treated them as if they were real.2 The composition of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes itself and its different recensions makes it a difficult source to trace; the work continued to be rewritten and modified throughout antiquity according to the needs and constraints of different authors, historical periods and social conditions. The vast literature on Alexander that was produced in eastern Greece penetrated other literary traditions, among which the Persian corpus is but one of many intersecting branches. This is the issue with which this book has principally been concerned. It has also addressed the question about the extent to which the Alexander Romance influenced Persian literature in general. Thus this book has tried to refocus and rethink the debate on the following points:

(1)The development of the Alexander Romance in the Persian tradition: was there any Middle Persian translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes? If so, what characteristics would it have had?

(2)What sort of Syriac and Arabic translations of the Pseudo-Callisthenes existed? What do Persian sources tell us about Syriac and Arabic sources?

(3)The vast influence of the Alexander Romance on Persian literature: the Romance had a great impact on historiography, epic, storytelling (popular romances), the mirabilia genre and wisdom literature – and in particular on the mirror for princes genre.

Although a number of important points have been covered in the conclusions of each chapter, a few of them are quite new and original, and deserve highlighting here in the following summaries.

The Genesis of the Persian Alexander Romance

Since the nineteenth century AD, when Theodore Nöldeke launched his theory about the development of the Pseudo-Callisthenes in Syriac, Arabic, Persian and Ethiopic versions, there have been many disputes around how, when and through which channels the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes entered the Persian tradition.3 Nöldeke's theory was based on a philological examination of the Syriac text. He affirmed that a Middle Persian version must have preceded the Syriac version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes. His hypothesis is still generally accepted today despite some disagreements on minor points.4 However, despite different viewpoints regarding the transmission of the Pseudo-Callisthenes in the East, it might now be possible to add a new argument to Nöldeke's hypothesis in light of the new materials that have been discovered over the past century and recent decades. This book has attempted to do precisely this: to review the origins of the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition and explore its development in light of these new materials.

The main problem in tracing the origins of Persian versions of the Alexander Romance emerges when we consider that there is a vast gap between the pre-Islamic period and the appearance of the first example of this work in Persian in the tenth century AD: Firdawsī's Shāhnāma. This is because Arabic replaced Middle Persian for almost two centuries after the Arab conquest of Persia, during which time next to no written works survived in Middle Persian. Thus, in order to determine whether there was a Middle Persian version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, besides later Persian sources, we must rely primarily on Arabic sources. However, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the Persian and Arabic sources studied here were written almost four centuries after the fall of the Sasanians.5 It is possible therefore that they contain elements and passages that were not in pre-Islamic sources. In view of this, we may ask to what extent Arabic and Persian works really reflect the actual content of pre-Islamic sources? In order to address this question, we should assume that the only motifs that might have been in the Middle Persian Vorlage are those that are mentioned in almost all of these sources, and that contain Persian words and elements from Persian epic and mythology.

A second problem arises when we consider the hostility shown towards Alexander by extant Middle Persian writings, which generally consider him to be one of the greatest enemies of Iran: a man who destroyed the country and eradicated its religion, destroying its sacred writings and fire temples. Since there is almost no extant source on Alexander from the pre-Islamic Persian tradition, might it be possible that there was a Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance? Is there any trace of a positive attitude towards Alexander in pre-Islamic Persian sources? And if a Middle Persian version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes did exist, what characteristics did it have?

As a first step towards resolving these questions, this book has explored the Persian versions of the Alexander Romance, not from a philological point of view but by examining different motifs and the actual contents of the legends relating to the conqueror in order to find answers. We have departed from a point of view that focuses solely on the Sasanians as an empire that dominated a vast territory of different people with different languages and religions, and who were thus not restricted to the Zoroastrian attitude towards Alexander. Instead, we have assumed that there is a great possibility that a Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance did exist in the pre-Islamic period.

We can now revisit some of the key points made throughout the whole book regarding the existence and the development of the Alexander Romance from the pre-Islamic Persian tradition up to the twelfth century AD. Our investigation has focused on the evidence found in Arabic and Persian sources, particularly their historical formation and composition.

Firstly, we can conclude that legends concerning Alexander the Great must have existed in the Iranian world from the Parthian period. It has already been said that the fame and popularity of the Alexander legends in the East was due to the contact and relations between the Iranians and Greeks living in Greek cities in Asia Minor during the Parthian period,6 the effect of which can be detected in Ṭarsūsī's Dārābnāma. Furthermore, apart from cultural materials such as coinage, some texts show that there was a positive attitude towards Alexander among the Parthians, who often tried to link themselves to Alexander's legacy in Iran. For instance, as Daryaee points out, in the Middle Persian manuscript MU29, the Arsacids connected themselves to Alexander and the Irano-Hellenic cultural setting;7 this unique text shows that besides the hostile Zoroastrian attitude, there were Middle Persian sources with a positive view of the conqueror.

Thus the timeworn opposition between the Pahlavi tradition and the Arabic and Persian traditions should not lead us in the wrong direction. Despite the hostile attitude in the Pahlavi sources, Persian legends concerning Alexander's ancestry and his deeds as a legitimate Persian king might have had their origin among the Parthians. In this context, we also have the testimony of Tacitus (Annals, 6.31), who claims that the Arsacid king Ardawān II legitimised his claim over Roman territories by associating himself with Alexander and the Seleucids on one hand, and with the Achaemenids on the other.8 Therefore, the so-called Persian ancestry of Alexander found in the Alexander Romance, which linked him with the Kayānid kings (especially Bahman Ardashīr, Dārāb and Dārā) on one hand, and Philip on the other, might have had its origin in the Arsacid period. These legends must have been circulating orally due to the Parthians' mainly oral cultural tradition.9

Secondly, there appears to have been a distinct historical epoch in which the Sasanian Persian legends concerning Alexander the Great came into contact with the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition. The period of Khusraw Anūshirvān's reign (Chosroes I, r. 531–79) must be considered as the most probable time when these oral legends were amalgamated with the Alexander Romance. During his reign, Khusraw Anūshirvān accepted refugees from the Eastern Roman Empire and Alexandria when Justinian closed the Neoplatonist schools of Athens in 529.10 Thus, it is likely that the Greek tale became known to Persians as a result of the Hellenophiliac interests of this Sasanian king.11

Furthermore, the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī and Arabic historical accounts such as that of Ṭabarī and Dīnawarī, and the Nihāya, incorporated the Persian ancestry variant, which shows that the Alexander Romance was modified and adapted for the purpose of creating a coherent history of Iran. As Ḥāfiẓ claims in a famous verse,12 Alexander's legend among the Iranians subsequently became emblematic of the downfall of the kingdom of Darius III. Thus, the Alexander Romance in general and his conquest of Persia in particular became regarded as an integral part of Persian history that was impossible to ignore.

At this juncture, the question arises as to whether there was ever any independent ‘written’ version of the Alexander Romance in Middle Persian. Alexander is always portrayed as part of the history of the Kayānid dynasty in Arabic historical accounts and in the Persian Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, the earliest sources in which motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes appear. These same sources deal with the Alexander Romance as a part of Persian history. It is not until the twelfth century AD that we find independent works on Alexander under the individual title of Iskandarnāma (The Book of Alexander). This does not mean that such a written text did not exist prior to this. The citation of motifs from the Pseudo-Callisthenes tradition in the poems of Persian poets of the tenth and eleventh centuries shows the popularity of the Alexander Romance in Iran, especially in Khurāsān and Sīstān.13 For instance, Farrukhī Sīstānī (d. 1037) affirmed in the eleventh century AD that Alexander's story was so famous that everyone knew it by heart.14 Therefore, it is likely that the Alexander Romance was known and circulated in oral form, as the popular romance of the Dārābnāma itself demonstrates. The romance achieved such popularity and fame that it reached the Arabs, as reflected in the Sīrat al-Iskandar, in the same way that the story of Rustam and Isfandīyār was recited in Mecca.15

Keeping this in mind, it is possible that the Middle Persian written version of the Alexander Romance was included in the Sasanian Khudāynāmag, with historians treating it as a part of Persian history. This might be the reason that there is no mention of such an independent individual work in reference works such as Ibn Nadīm's al-Fihrist. From this we may also deduce that the first translation of the Alexander Romance into Arabic was through this Middle Persian version in the Khudāynāmag, since the earliest Arabic versions (of Dīnawarī and Ṭabarī, and the Nihāya) contain the Persian ancestry of Alexander, linking him with the Kayānids.

Here another question arises regarding the Syriac translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes: was it based on a Middle Persian translation of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes, as Nöldeke argues,16 or was it based on a Greek text, as Richard Frye and Claudia Ciancaglini propose?17 We know, for instance, that Firdawsī's Shāhnāma contains Christian references, especially in passages with a strong Persian element (such as that of Alexander's birth). This would indicate that if the Middle Persian version also contained Christian references, it must have been based on the Syriac translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes;18 this in turn would explain Boyce and Tafaḍḍulī's affirmation that the authors of the Khudāynāmag used Syriac sources for the passage on Alexander.19 Does it follow that no Middle Persian version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes existed, which is why they had to use ‘Syriac sources’?

There is some evidence to suggest that the Syriac Alexander Romance was translated under the patronage of the Sasanian king Khusraw I. Budge, for instance, suggests that Syriac was not the translator's native language.20 In this case, the translator or translators might have been Nestorian Christians who were Persian-speaking subjects of the Sasanian Empire, and who produced Persian and Syriac translations of Greek texts for the Persian court.21 If we consider this possibility, the presence of Persian elements and the author's familiarity with the history and geography of Iran in the Syriac Alexander Romance can be easily explained. This theory is strengthened by a series of literary features, particularly the replacement of the Achaemenid kings' names with the Sasanian title Khusraw (an allusion to Khusraw I or II), which is evidently intentional.22

Thus it is likely that both Middle Persian and Syriac versions of the Alexander Romance were translated by (one or more) Nestorians in the Sasanian court under the patronage of Khusraw (either I or II) in the second half of the sixth century AD. Since the first appearance of motifs from the Alexander Romance can be found in the works of Firdawsī and other historians – works that are supposed to be based indirectly on the Sasanian Khudāynāmag – it seems that the Middle Persian translation of the Pseudo-Callisthenes was adopted and integrated into the Khudāynāmag. It is likely that an independent Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance ‘in written form’ did not exist, since it always appeared as a part of Persian history – that is, until the twelfth century AD, when independent works on Alexander appeared. This is only a hypothesis, however, since neither a Middle Persian version of the Alexander Romance nor the original or any Arabic translation of the Khudāynāmag have ever been found, and are presumed lost.

The Shāhnāma of Firdawsī

Khaleghi-Motlagh affirms in various studies that the story of Alexander, as we see it in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, was not included in the Khudāynāmag; instead, it was based on an independent translation in Arabic, which was itself based on the Middle Persian version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, according to Nöldeke's hypothesis.23 Our analysis of the Alexander passage in the Shāhnāma has shown its complexity, which is due to the different sources that inspired the story, which were evidently gradually added to it. The basis of the story of Alexander's birth and the parts that deal directly with ‘Persian history’ (that is, the reigns of Dārāb and Dārā) must have been derived from the Khudāynāmag. In addition, the Shāhnāma contains most of the Syriac materials, which were independent sources in their original forms – such as the tales of Gog and Magog, the Water of Life and the philosophers' lamentations. Firdawsī's epic poem contains the story of the Indian king Kayd, which must have been an independent source in Middle Persian too, as the poet himself also claims. It is not clear when all these materials were put together, but Firdawsī's Alexander Romance is a coherent and well-integrated tale within the framework of the Shāhnāma. However, Tha'ālibī's Ghurar akhbār, which was based on the Shāhnāma of Abū Manṣūr, contains almost all the same materials found in Firdawsī's work. This indicates that in the Shāhnāma of Abū Manṣūr at least – that is, by the tenth century AD – all these materials had probably been collated in the form later seen in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī.

In addition, most of the Syriac materials in Firdawsī's Shāhnāma, such as the story of Gog and Magog and the apocalyptic figures, contain elements from the Persian tradition. This demonstrates that they may have been integrated into the tale from the Syriac tradition at an early stage, possibly at the end of the Sasanian period in the early seventh century AD. Thus, Firdawsī's version of Alexander's story represents a valuable clue in identifying terra incognita in the ancient landscape of the Alexander Romance.

The Iskandarnāma of Niẓāmī Ganjavī

Our examination of the contents of the Iskandarnāma has also revealed that Niẓāmī compiled and collated therein a great variety of pre-Islamic Persian stories about Alexander from the Sasanian period. Niẓāmī demonstrates his knowledge of Sasanian tales in his other works, in particular his Khusraw u Shīrīn and Haft Paykar, which deal with the adventures of two Sasanian kings (Khusraw II and Bahrām V GŌr). Thus it is not at all surprising that his Iskandarnāma also reflects Sasanian tales concerning Alexander the Great.

We must also take into account the historical relevance of Niẓāmī's poem to his homeland, Azerbaijan, which was an important religious centre during the Sasanian period, as the hearth and heartland of one of the Persian Empire's three most sacred fires.24 As a result, Azerbaijan must have had a powerful effect on the elaboration of Zoroastrian tales and the creation of Sasanian culture and religious lore. This may account for both the great variety and the novelty of Niẓāmī's information and tales. These tales were probably based on non-religious Sasanian/Azerbaijani literature, which had not yet vanished in Niẓāmī's lifetime. We thus find Niẓāmī quoting a so-called Nāma-yi Khusrawī (Book of Kings), a Tārīkh-i Dihqān (History of Dihqān), a ‘guzāranda-yi dāstān-i Darī’ (narrator of a Persian tale) and a ‘mūbad-i mūbadān’ (chief Zoroastrian priest) in different passages of both parts of the Iskandarnāma. All these quotations can probably be taken as referring to his pre-Islamic Persian sources.

But Niẓāmī's Iskandarnāma contains even more surprises. While the Eastern versions of the Alexander Romance are supposed to be based on the δ-recension of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, the Iskandarnāma includes motifs from sub-recension ɛ, probably due to his use of Jewish sources. We may also assume that while Firdawsī's Shāhnāma reflects Eastern (Khurāsānī/Parthian) legends concerning Alexander, which represented him as a Christian, Niẓāmī's Alexander embodies Western (particularly Caucasian) tales of the conqueror, and also reflects the Jewish tradition, as he himself affirms at the beginning of the Sharafnāma.

However, such motifs can also be seen as indicative of the literary cross-fertilisation of various thematic elements, such as the story's protagonist travelling further eastwards or westwards and experiencing various fantastic adventures under similar circumstances. Dick Davis has rather convincingly considered the hypothesis that Greek and Persian literary cultures intermingled and borrowed from each other.25 It is likely that these elements originate from a similar stock of mythological motifs, which over time came to be applied to different heroes.26 Alexander's celebrity among the Persians and in the Islamic tradition in general is a measure of the esteem Hellenistic culture has always enjoyed in the Persianate world.

The analysis of themes from the Alexander Romance in Niẓāmī's Iskandarnāma thus highlights the striking extent to which religious traditions and cultures have interpenetrated. Alexander's personality seems to have developed into an amalgam of diverse literary, historical, mythological and religious personages. As John Renard points out, Alexander functions as a transitional figure between royal and religious character types.27 Alexander's identification with the Dhū'l-Qarnayn of the Qur'ān (18:82 ff.) is a crucial link that distinguishes the royal ‘Persian Alexander’ from the religious ‘Muslim Alexander’. In the Persian tradition, he had two different histories, which might even have existed in parallel. He was considered to be the ‘Accursed One’ who destroyed the country and religion of Īrān-zamīn, and he was also the Persian king and hero – a slayer of dragons who had strange adventures resembling those of Isfandīyār and Kay Khusraw. In the Islamic period, Alexander then became a model of the ideal ‘good king’, the most elaborate picture of which appears in Niẓāmī's Iskandarnāma, where the Macedonian king is turned into a perfect philosopher and ideal monarch – a figure of sacral authority and a ‘law-giving’ prophet!

In conclusion, there are very few legends in history that aspire to reach different audiences and yet harbour such vast thematic resonances and generic references as the Alexander Romance. As we have seen throughout this book, the tale of the Macedonian world conqueror Alexander the Great gave rise to various interpretations in the long history of its reception in Persian history and literature. The Alexander Romance thus demonstrates, as Ulrich Marzolph affirms, that ‘world literature is not only, and maybe not even primarily, defined by the appeal of a given literary work, but moreover by this work's capacity to link its basic narrative to different cultural contexts and thus become part of a web of tradition that is constantly woven by the creative combination of history and imagination’.28

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