THE LEGEND OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN THE CHRISTIAN ORIENT*

STEPHEN GERO
EBERHARD-KARLS-UNIVERSITAT, TUBINGEN

The perennial fascination with the figure of Alexander the Great is reflected in the phenomenal spread of the Alexander romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, 1 a work in itself surely not distinguished either by historical accuracy or (at least for our modern taste) any particular literary merit. There are versions of the Alexander romance to be found among peoples whom neither the Alexander of history nor the Alexander of legend ever visited; the gamut ranges from a Swedish version in the far north 2 through a (fragmentary) Mongolian version in central Asia,3 all the way to elaborations in Malay4 and other southeast Asian languages. Only the great wall of China seems to have checked, so to speak, the triumphant literary progress of this literary product of third-century Alexandrian Hellenism. This is not the place to discuss in detail the complicated questions either of the identifiable sources or of the several recensions of the Greek Alexander romance. 5 The text remained alive, so to speak, through the centuries and, never protected by the hedge of canonization, was considerably modified in the course of
* A revised and expanded version of a public lecture delivered at Harvard University and at the Catholic University of America in April 1990. 1 Edition of the oldest version, on the basis of Par.gr. 1711 (saec. xi), by W. Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni /PscnJo-Callisthenes), vol. I (Berlin, 1926); for a complete English translation of this version see E.H. Haight, The life of Alexander of Macedon (New York, 1955); see now also R. Stoneman, The Greek Alexander romance (London, 1991). For useful surveys of the later material see A. Abel, Lc roman d'Alexandre: legendaire medieval (Bruxelles, 1955); G. Gary, The medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956); J.A. Boyle, 'The Alexander romance in the East and West', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 60 (197"), 13 ff. F. Pfister provides the impressive statistic of about 200 different extant prose or verse versions (Kleine Schriften zum Alt'\ancrniinan (Aieisenheim, 1976), 19). 2 See Clary, Alexander, 50. 3 N. Poppe, 'Eine mongolische Fassung der Alexandersage', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Ccscllsc/iaft, 107 (1957), 105-2". On the appearance of certain episodes of the Syriac Alexander legends in Turkish and Mongol historical lore see J.A. Boyle, 'The Alexander legend in Central Asia', Folklore, 85 (1974), 21" ff. 4 P.J. van Lccuwcn, De maleische . \lcxanderroman (Meppel, 193"). 5 See H. Merkelbach-J. Trumpf, Die Quellen Jcs griec/risciicn Alexanderrpinan* (Munich, 197"), 92 ff, 201 ff.

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time. Here just a brief survey of the various versions of the Alexander legend among the non-Hellenic peoples of the Christian Orient will be presented; Byzantine material proper can be noted only marginally.6 The oldest such oriental witness is the Armenian version/ Extant in over thirty manuscripts,8 it represents a translation made directly from the Greek. It has been dated very early, to the fifth century; this dating may need revision, because it assumes in turn the wrong fifth-century dating of Moses Xorenac'i's history, which is textually dependent on the Armenian Pseudo-Callisthenes.9 This Armenian version is nevertheless a good witness to an early recension of the Alexander romance. 10 Of particular interest is the fact that several Armenian manuscripts are richly illustrated, and the cycle may well go back to a prototype, to lost late antique illustrations of the early Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes. 11 The Alexander romance is the only work of profane Greek entertainment literature, as opposed to technical or philosophical works, which was translated from Greek into Armenian in late antiquity. The influence of this version, apart from traces in Armenian historiography, was slight, although it was translated into Turkish late in the seventeenth century. 12 There seems to have existed no full translation of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes in Georgian, the other major Christian literary language of the Caucasus area; only Georgian translations, possibly via a Slavonic intermediate stage, of the late medieval Byzantine Alexander legend are known. 13 Of an early Coptic version in the Sahidic dialect (? sixth century) only fragments survive, from a single manuscript (eleventh century), the Coptic text seems to be affiliated to the so-called (3-recension of the Greek. 14 This is all rather meager for Christian Egypt - was Alexander too much of a Greek to stimulate the imagination of the nationalistic Copts?
6 See H.J. Gleixner, Das Alexanderbild der Byzantiner (Munich, 1961). The most recent contribution in this area is U. Moennig, Die spatbyzantinische Rezension des Alexanderromans (Cologne, 1992). 7 R. T'reanc' (ed.), Patmut'iwn Alek'sandri Makedonac'woy (Venice, 1842); English translation, A.M. Wolohojian, The romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes (New York and London, 1969); Greek retroversion by R. Raabe, ISTOPIA AAEEANAPOY (Leipzig, 1896). 8 N. Akinian 'Die handschriftliche Uberlieferung der armenischen Ubersetzung des Alexanderromans von Pseudo-Callisthenes', Byzantion, xiii (1938), 201ff. 9 J. Gildemeister, 'Pseudokallisthenes bei Moses von Khoren', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, 40 (1886), 88-91; R.W. Thomson, Moses Khorenats'i, History of the Armenians (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1978), 22-3; Wolohojian, Romance, llff. 10 So A. Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907), 12ff and more recently H. van Thiel, Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien. Der griechische Alexanderroman nach der Handschrift L (Darmstadt, 1974), xxxviii. 11 D.J.A. Ross, Alexander historiatus: a guide to medieval illustrated Alexander literature (London, 1963), 6-7. 12 See Pfister, Kleine Schriften, 24. 13 Ross, Alexander historiatus, 45. 14 O. von Lemm, Der Alexanderroman bei den Kopten (St Petersburg, 1903), 6.

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The Syriac version of Pseudo-Callisthenes 15 extant in several, albeit late (and unilluminated!) manuscripts, has an interesting history and was immensely more influential than any of the oriental versions thus far discussed. Attempts to connect directly the Syriac with Greek or Arabic prototypes have failed; in fact it has been convincingly demonstrated by Theodor Noldeke, in a monograph which still is absolutely essential for the serious study of the Alexander romance, that the Syriac was translated from a lost Middle Persian, Pahlavi original. 16 Both the dating and the purpose of this lost Pahlavi version from the Greek are matters of speculation; in any case the translator was probably a Nestorian Christian, since in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature Alexander is a uniformly negative figure. 17 Was this Pahlavi translation intended for edification and entertainment at the court of some Hellenophile Sasanian emperor, or was it meant for the Persian Christians themselves? The Syriac translation in turn should probably be dated to the late sixth or the early seventh century. 18 Textually it is affiliated with the oldest Greek recension, but also shows some interesting additions, in particular a long episode (derived from a lost Greek text?) of Alexander's journey through central Asia all the way to China. 19 A Christian Arabic translation (again, like the Pahlavi, in its original form lost) of this Syriac text, probably made in the early ninth century,20 is the source of much of the non-Koranic Alexander tradition and legend in the Islamic world, including the flowering of Persian poetry (Firdausl, Nizaml), which is now beyond our purview. 21 This lost Arabic translation, 22 much amplified and

15 E.A. Wallis Budge (ed. and trans.), The history of Alexander the Great being the Syriac version of Pseudo-Callisthenes (Cambridge, 1889); partial translation by Th.D. Woolsey, 'Notice of a life of Alexander the Great translated from the Syriac', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 4 (1854), 3 ff., 357 ff. 16 Th. Noldeke, 'Beitrage zur Geschichte des Alexanderromans', in Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wisseuschaften, Philosophisch-historische Classe, vol. 38, Abhandlung V (Vienna, 1890), 11 ff. 17 So S. Fraenkel in his review of Noldeke's 'Beitrage', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, 45 (1891), 319-20. 18 Noldeke,'Beitrage', 16. 19 See Boyle, 'Alexander legend', 16 ff. 20 K.F Weymann, Die aethiopische und arabische ubersetzung des Pseudocallisthenes. Eine literarkritische L'ntersuchung (Kirchhain, 1901), 79. For an attempt, not entirely convincing, to recover this early text from a late Muslim Hispano-Arabic Alexander narrative see A.R. Anderson, 'The Arabic History of Dulcarnain and the Ethiopian History of Alexander', Speculum 6 (1931), 434-45. 21 See M.S. Southgate, Iskandamamah: a Persian medieval Alexander-romance (New York, 1978), 16"ff. 22 This should be rigorously distinguished from the (still unedited) seventeenth-century translation made by the cleric Yuwasaf ibn Suwaidan, based probably on the twelfth to thirteenth-century Byzantine Alexander prose narrative. See J. Trumpf, 'Zur Uberlieferung des mittelgriechischen Prosa-Alexander .', Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1967) 22-7 and A. Ch. Lolos in (iracco-Arabica iii (1984), 199 ff. The 'Arabic Pseudocallisthenes' in an Istanbul

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modified, formed the basis for the last major oriental Christian version of the Alexander romance, namely the Ethiopia. 23 This version is again extant in several, albeit late manuscripts, unfortunately not illustrated. The Arabic text was transmitted to Ethiopia via Egypt, as might be expected, and it includes some interpolations from the tenth-century Arabic chronicle of Eutychius of Alexandria. 24 It is well known that Alexander appears in the Koran (Sura 18) under the name of E)u'l-Qarnain, the hero with the two horns. In particular he is described there as shutting in the tribes of Yajuj waMajuj, the biblical Gog and Magog, by means of an iron gate or dam until the end of time, when they shall burst out of their captivity. 25 Now, this episode is not found in the oldest form of the Greek Alexander romance; it was only interpolated, as we shall presently see, into later Byzantine medieval recensions of the text from elsewhere; that is, the Alexander romance stride dictu cannot be considered as a source of the Koranic narrative. 26 The story of the gate27 by contrast is well attested in other related early Alexander legends, to which we shall now turn. This is material which is of interest not only for elucidating the background of the seminal Koranic presentation but also more generally for the emergence of a Christian apocalyptic interpretation of Alexander. The most important text of this nature is a relatively short Syriac narrative, entitled 'an exploit (neshana) of Alexander, the son of Philip the Macedonian, how he went forth to the ends of the world and made a gate of iron and shut it in the face of the north wind, that the Hunaye might not come forth to plunder the lands.'28

manuscript dating to the fifteenth century, noted at second hand in Gary, Alexander, 12, n. 19, is with some likelihood a free Muslim reworking, not this missing link, as asserted (loc. cit.) by D.J. Ross, the editor of Gary's book. Cf. B. Meissner, 'Mubassirs Ahbar el-Iskender', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, xlix (1895), 583. To complicate matters, one must take into account the (?lost) Arabic translation of the Latin Historia de preliis, subsequently rendered into Hebrew (see I. Levi in Revue des etudes juives, 3 (1881) 259). 23 E.A. Wallis Budge (ed. and trans.), The life and exploits of Alexander the Great, 2 vols (London, 1896); translation only in the same author's The Alexander book in Ethiopia (London, 1933). 24 Weymann, Ubersetzung, 20ff. 25 Sura 18:83-98; trans. R. Paret, Der Koran, second edition (Stuttgart, 1980), 211. 26 Paret's statement to this effect (Der Koran. Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart, 1980), 318) is to be corrected. 27 For a well-nigh complete collection of material see A.R. Anderson, Alexander's gate, Gog and Magog, and the inclosed nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1932) and the same author's earlier paper, 'Alexander at the Caspian Gates', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 59 (1928), 130ff. However, Anderson had access to the oriental material only at second hand and this led him to some false conclusions; see e.g. Czegledy, Ada Orient. Hung, vii (1957), 236, n. 18. On material culled from medieval Arabic and Persian sources see further C.E. Wilson, 'The wall of Alexander against Gog and Magog and the expedition sent out to find it by the Khalif Wathiq in 842 A.D.', in Hirth anniversary volume (London, 1922), 575ff. 28 Budge, History, 255, lines 1-3.

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This work, in all its manuscript forms, follows the Syriac version of the Alexander romance proper, but does not appear to depend on it directly. It claims to have been taken 'from the writings in the house of the archives of the kings of Alexandria'29 but seems to be in fact an original Syriac composition, not a translation from Greek. It is by no means a full biography of Alexander; in particular any allusion to the histoire scandaleuse of Olympias and Nectanebus is lacking. It deals only with Alexander's travels, the building of the gate against the barbarians and the subsequent defeat of the king of Persia. The apocalyptic element is very pronounced in this work; Alexander is depicted as a pious, proto-Christian instrument of God, endowed with the gift of prophetic utterance. Several features of the text also occur in the Koranic narrative - the famous horns of Alexander, the journey to the west and then to the east, and of course the central theme of the gate, which will be opened at an apocalyptic Endzeit by divine command. But, although this has been proposed by Noldeke30 and often repeated since,31 the work also does not qualify as a direct source for the 'two-horned' Alexander of the Koran, at least not in its present form; recent investigations indicate an ex eventu knowledge of the Khazar invasion of Armenia in A.D. 629. 32 This prose legend (neshana) was then in turn the literary source of the Syriac metrical homily attributed to Jacob of Sarug (sixth century) in the manuscripts.33 The poem however was actually written in the seventh century, shortly before the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia and Palestine.34 The political dimension of apocalyptic in this work is very interesting. Thus, Alexander's conquests are identified in detail with Heraclius's territorial gains (or potential claims),35 and the politically conciliant feature of the neshana, that, despite the Persian defeat, the guarding of the gate is a contractually

29 Budge, History, 255, line 4. 30 Budge, History, 32. 31 E.g. Southgate, Iskandernamah, 201; I. Friedlaender, Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexanderroman (Leipzig-Berlin, 1913), 278; Anderson, Alexander's gate, 28, and in the same author's article 'Alexander's horns', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 58 (1927), 110-11. 32 K. Czegledy, 'The Syriac legend concerning Alexander the Great', Ada Orientalia Hung., 7 (1957), 231 ff. Whether the divergent version of a 'narrative about Alexander' preserved in summary form in the eighth-century chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of TellMahre (ed. Chabot, Corpus Scripiorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 91 (1953, reprint of edition of 1927), 41, lines 15 ff.), without the tell-tale apocalyptic features would so qualify, deserves further investigation. For a summary see Anderson, Alexander's gate, 27-8. 33 G.-J. Reinink (ed. and trans.) Das syrische Alexanderlied, 2 vols, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 454-5 (Louvain, 1983). 34 C. Hunnius, Das synschc Alexanderlied (Gottingen, 1904), 21 ff., arguing, to my mind convincingly, against Noldeke's older sixth-century dating. See further Czegledy, 'The Syriac legend', 248, and Reinink, Alexanderlied, vol. 2, 10 ff. 35 See Hunnius, Alexanderlied, 30-31; Reinink, Alexanderlied, ii, 105, n. 38.

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fixed joint Roman-Persian responsibility, 36 is passed over in the poem in silence. The legend of Alexander's shutting in of Gog and Magog is also found in the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, a quite obscure, but extremely influential text, primarily devoted to the eschatological interpretation of the Arab conquest. This work also was composed in Syriac, sometime in the last quarter of the seventh century,37 although it was soon translated not only into Greek,38 but also from Greek into Latin. 39 The account of Alexander's gate in Pseudo-Methodius is not identical with that of the Syriac neshana, but has some significant differing features, which preclude a literary dependence. The gate is located at 'the breasts of the north', a geographical designation otherwise found only in Syriac sources.40 As recent research has abundantly shown, it is the account of Alexander's gate from this Greek Pseudo-Methodius text which was added to later recensions of the Alexander romance (and not conversely!). 41 It is in the form enriched with this apocalyptic interpolation that the Alexander romance became widespread in the Byzantino-Slavic world. The borrowing in some of the recensions of Pseudo-Callisthenes is made directly from Pseudo-Methodius.42 In some manuscripts, however, the Pseudo-Methodius material is further elaborated, true to the genre of the Alexander romance, as a letter from Alexander to his mother Olympias, and cast in a non-apocalyptic form.43 Is this last in itself an archaic feature, prior to the apocalyptic colouring which was gradually given, under the influence of several barbarian invasions of the fourth to seventh centuries, to the story of Alexander's building of the Caspian Gates? The point richly deserves further investigation!

36 Budge, History, 274, lines 19 ff. On the political aspect of the eschatology of the poem, see G.J. Reinink, 'Die Entstehung der syrischen Alexanderlegende als politisch-religiose Propagandaschrift fur Herakleios' Kirchenpolitik', Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, xviii (1985), 263-81. 37 On the status quaestionis see now G.J. Reinink, 'Der edessenische "Pseudo-Methodius"', Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Ixxxiii (1990), 31 ff. For a readily accessible (although not entirely satisfactory!) edition of the Syriac text see H. Suermann, Die geschichtstheologische Reaktion auf die einfallenden Muslime in der edessenischen Apokalyptik des 7. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1985), 34 ff. 38 A Lolos (ed.), Die Apocalypse des Ps.-Methodios (Meisenheim, 1976) and Die dritte und vierte Redaktion des Ps.-Methodios (Meisenheim, 1978). 39 E. Sackur (ed.), Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle, 1898), 59ff. 40 See J. Trumpf, 'Alexander, die Bersiler und die Briiste des Nordens', Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Ixiv (1971), 326-8. 41 See Merkelbach-Trumpf, Quellen, 148-9. 42 Recension e, ch. 39 Q. Trumpf (ed.), Anonymi Byzantini vita Alexandn regis Macedonum (Stuttgart, 1971), 145 ff.); F. Parthe, Der griechische Alexanderroman, Rezension Y, Buch III (Meisenheim, 1969), 402 ff. 43 L. Bergson, Der griechische Alexanderroman. Rezension (3 (Uppsala, 1965), 205 ff.; H. van Thiel, Die Rezension \ des Pseudo-Kallisthenes (Bonn, 1959), 55 ff.; F. Parthe, Alexanderroman, 430ff.; S. Reichmann, Das byzantinische Alexandergedicht nach dem Codex Marcianus 408 . . . (Meisenheim, 1968), lines 5710 ff.

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It is hoped that the importance of the several Christian oriental versions and offshoots of Alexander romance has been made clear. Much more research is of course needed, primarily on the Syriac material. The apocalyptic dimension of Alexander's building of the gate to confine the barbarians, although no invention of the Syriacspeaking Christians (Jewish influences certainly played a role),44 came to be at any rate significantly developed in Mesopotamian Christian circles. The image of Alexander as apocalyptic guardian of civilization and inspired prophet of the one God was mediated to the medieval Muslim and Byzantine world through the literary activity of these oriental Christians, whose pivotal intellectual and religious contributions to the civilization of the Mediterranean are still all too often insufficiently appreciated.

44 See F Pfistcr, 'Gog und Magog', in Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, iii (Berlin-Leipzig 1930-31), cols 910 ff. and F Kampers, Alexander der Gro/3e und die Idee des \\"cltnnpcriums in Prophetie und Sage (Freiburg, 1901), 184 ff.