page_title: Hypotheses about the identity of Dhu al-Qarnayn
section_title: Dating and origins of the Alexander legends
hierarchical_section_title: Hypotheses about the identity of Dhu al-Qarnayn / The legendary Alexander / Dating and origins of the Alexander legends
caption_attribution_description: Español: Libro del siglo XI escrito en arameo. Slovenščina: Rokopis v sirski pisavi iz The Schøyen Collection MS 577, Oslo in London. Syriac Sertâ book script. Gora Sinaj, Egipt, približno 11. stoletje. English: The Schøyen Collection MS 577, Oslo and London. Syriac Sertâ book script. Mt. Sinai, Egypt, ca. 11th c. Hermologion: Heirmos 705-709, Melchite Use. MS in Syriac on paper, 2 ff., 20x14 cm, 16 lines in Syriac Sertâ book script, knotwork decorated headpiece, marginal drawings of roundels, interlace patterns, etc. in black and red. From the Monastery of St Catherine, Mt Sinai. Elizabeth G. Sørenssen &amp; Jingru Høivik: photography and formatting.
context_page_description: The story of Dhul-Qarnayn, mentioned in the Quran, may be a reference to Alexander III of Macedon, popularly known as Alexander the Great. Some Western and traditional Muslim scholars identify Alexander the Great as Dhul-Qarnayn. However, some early Muslim scholars believed it to be a reference to a pre-Islamic monarch from Persia or south Arabia, with, according to Maududi, modern Muslim scholarship also leaning in favour of identifying him with Cyrus the Great.
  Peter Bietenholz argues that the story of Dhul-Qarnayn has its origins in legends of Alexander the Great current in the Middle East in the early years of the Christian era.
context_section_description: The legendary Alexander material originated as early as the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305 BC to 30 BC)  and its unknown authors are sometimes referred to as the Pseudo-Callisthenes (not to be confused with Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was Alexander's official historian). The earliest surviving manuscript of the Alexander romance, called the α (alpha) recension, can be dated to the 3rd century AD and was written in Greek in Alexandria:
  There have been many theories regarding the date and sources of this curious work [the Alexander romance]. According to the most recent authority, ... it was compiled by a Greco-Egyptian writing in Alexandria about A.D. 300. The sources on which the anonymous author drew were twofold. On the one hand he made use of a `romanticized history of Alexander of a highly rhetorical type depending on the Cleitarchus tradition, and with this he amalgamated a collection of imaginary letters derived from an Epistolary Romance of Alexander written in the first century B.C. He also included two long letters from Alexander to his mother Olympias and his tutor Aristotle  describing his marvellous adventures in India and at the end of the World. These are the literary expression of a living popular tradition and as such are the most remarkable and interesting part of the work.
  The Greek variants of the Alexander romance continued to evolve until, in the 4th century, the Greek legend was translated into Latin by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius (where it is called the Res gestae Alexandri Magni) and from Latin it spread to all major vernacular languages of Europe in the Middle Ages. Around the same as its translation into Latin, the Greek text was also translated into the Syriac language and from Syriac it spread to eastern cultures and languages as far afield as China and Southeast Asia. The Syriac legend was the source of an Arabic variant called the Qisas Dhul-Qarnayn (Tales of Dhul-Qarnayn) and a Persian variant  called the Iskandarnamah (Book of Alexander), as well as Armenian and Ethiopic translations.
  The version recorded in Syriac is of particular importance because it was current in the Middle East during the time of the Quran's writing and is regarded as being closely related to the literary and linguistic origins of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Quran. The Syriac legend, as it has survived, consists of five distinct manuscripts, including a Syriac Christian religious legend concerning Alexander and a sermon about Alexander ascribed to the Syriac poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh (451–521 AD, also called Mar Jacob), which according to Reinink was composed around 629–636. The Syriac Christian legend concentrates on Alexander's journey to the end of the World, where he constructs the Gates of Alexander to enclose the evil nations of Gog and Magog, while the sermon describes his journey to the Land of Darkness to discover the Water of Life (Fountain of Youth). These legends concerning Alexander are remarkably similar to the story of Dhul-Qarnayn found in the Quran.
  One of the five Syriac manuscripts, dated to the 18th century, has a version of the Syriac legend that has been  generally dated to between 629 AD and 636 AD. There is evidence in the legend of  "ex eventu knowledge of the Khazar invasion of Armenia in A.D. 629," which suggests that the legend must have been burdened with additions by a redactor sometime around 629 AD.  The legend   appears to have been composed as propaganda in support of Emperor Heraclius (575–641 AD) shortly after he defeated the Persians in the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628. It is notable that this manuscript fails to mention the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 636 AD by Muhammad's (570–632 AD) successor, Caliph Umar (590–644 AD). This fact means that the legend might have been recorded before the "cataclysmic event"` that was the Muslim conquest of Syria and the resulting surrender of Jerusalem in November 636 AD. That the Byzantine–Arab Wars would have been referenced in the legend, had it been written after 636 AD, is supported by the fact that in 692 A
caption: An 11th-century Syriac manuscript. The Syriac language is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Classical Syriac  became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th centuries,[15] the classical language of Edessa, preserved in a large body of Syriac literature. Syriac  became the vehicle of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and culture, spreading throughout Asia. Before Arabic became the dominant language, Syriac was a major language among the Assyrian Christian communities of the Middle East and Central Asia. Several Syriac manuscripts of the Alexander romance exist, dating from the 7th century. The Greek–Syriac translators are generally credited with introducing the works of the ancient Greeks to pre-Islamic Arabia.
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