Summary
A Syriac work called the Alexander Romance contains some motifs familiar from the Babylonian Gilgameš Epic, and it is the source for the Qur’ānic story of Dhu l-Qarnayn (Surah 18:83-102).
Text
The story of the legend begins when king Alexander summons his court to ask them about the outer edges of the world, for he wishes to go to see what surrounds it. His advisors warn him that there is a fetid sea like pus, Oceanos, surrounding the earth, and that to touch those waters is death. Alexander is undeterred and wishes to go on this quest. He prays to God, whom he addresses as the one who put horns upon his head, for power over the entire earth, and he promises God to obey the Messiah should he arrive during his lifetime or, if not, to put his own throne in Jerusalem for the Messiah to sit upon when he does come. On the way, he stops in Egypt where he borrows seven thousand Egyptian workers of brass and iron from the king of Egypt to accompany his huge army.
Then they set sail for four months and twelve days until they reach a distant land. Alexander asks the people there if they have any prisoners condemned to death in their prisons, and he asks that those evil-doers be brought to him. He takes the prisoners and sends them into the fetid sea in order to test the potency of the poisonous waters. All the evil-doers die, so Alexander, realizing how deadly it is, gives up his attempt to cross the waters. Instead he goes to a place of bright water, up to the Window of the Heavens that the sun enters when it sets, where there is a conduit of some kind leading through the heavens toward the place where the sun rises in the east.
Alexander follows the sun through its course to the east during the night, and descends at the mountain called Great Mûsās. His troops go with him. When the sun rises in the eastern land, the ground becomes so hot that to touch it is to be burnt alive, so that people living there flee the rising sun to hide in caves and in the water of the sea. We next find Alexander traveling at the headwaters of the Euphrates and the Tigris, where he and his armies stop at the locales given very specific place-names.
He continues northwards into mountains, evidently the Caucasus, until he comes to a place under Persian rule, where there is a narrow pass. The locals complain about the savage Huns who live on the opposite side of the pass. The names of their kings are listed to him, the first two of which are Gog and Magog. Alexander is treated to a vivid description of the barbarism of the Huns. He asks the locals if they want a favour, and they answer that they would follow his command. So he suggests building a wall of brass and iron to hold out the Huns. Together they accomplish the task with the help of the Egyptian metalworkers. Alexander puts an inscription on the gate containing a prophecy for events to follow his lifetime.
Source (list of abbreviations)
Alexander Romance (Syriac Version)
Bibliography
| Budge 1889, 145-156 | Budge, E. A. Wallis. The History of Alexander the Great, being the Syriac Version. Edited from five manuscripts of the Pseudo-Callisthenes with an English Translation. London: Cambridge University Press 1889 (reprint: Amsterdan: APA-Philo Press 1976, esp. pp. cv-cvi, lxxxi-lxxxiii, 5-6, 11-12, 15). |
Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Qur’ān, Surah 18:83-102
Amar Annus
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