Versions of The Romance
Alexander was a legend in his own time. In a now-lost history of the king, the historical Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, went so far as to invent a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. (According to Plutarch, when Onesicritus read this passage to his patron Lysimachus, one of Alexander's generals who went on to become a king himself, Lysimachus quipped "I wonder where I was at the time.")
Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Romance underwent numerous expansions and revisions exhibiting a plasticity unseen in "higher" literary forms. Latin, Armenian, Georgian and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity (4th to 6th centuries).
The Latin Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon was one of the most popular medieval romances. A 10th century Latin version by one Leo the Archpriest is the basis of the later medieval vernacular translations in all the major languages of Europe, including French (12th century), English, Scots (The Buik of Alexander) (13th century), Italian, Spanish (the Libro de Alexandre), German (the Alexanderlied and a 15th century version by Johannes Hartlieb), Slavonic, Romanian, and Hungarian.
The Syriac version gave rise to Middle Eastern recensions, including Arabic, Persian (the Iskandarnamah), Ethiopic, Hebrew (in the first part of Sefer HaAggadah), Turkish(14th century), and Middle Mongolian (13th century).
The story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Qur'an (Sura The Cave 18:83-98) matches the Gog and Magog episode in the Romance, which has caused some controversy among Islamic scholars (see Alexander in the Qur'an). Alexander was identified in Persian and Arabic-language sources as "Dhû-'l Qarnayn", Arabic for the "Horned One", likely a reference to the ram horns Alexander wears on coins minted during his rule to indicate his descent from the Egyptian god Amun. Islamic accounts of the Alexander legend, particularly in Persia, combined the Pseudo-Callisthenes material with indigenous Sassanid Middle Persian ideas about Alexander. The Alexander Romance is the source of many incidents in Ferdowsi's Shahnama.
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