Alexander the Great in Islamic tradition
Alexander the Great was a king of ancient Greece and Macedon who forged one of the largest empires in world history.
"The Two-Horned One"), a figure that appears in Surah Al-Kahf in the Quran, the holy text of Islam, which greatly expanded the attention paid to him in the traditions of the Muslim world.
[4] The earliest surviving Arabic narrative of the Alexander Romance, the Qissat al-Iskandar, was composed by Umara ibn Zayd (767–815 AD).
In Secretum Secretorum ("Secret of Secrets", in Arabic Kitab sirr al-asrar), an encyclopedic Arabic treatise on a wide range of topics such as statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, alchemy, astrology, magic and medicine, Alexander appears as a speaker and subject of wise sayings and as a correspondent with figures such as Aristotle.
Notably, the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim (794–842 AD) had ordered the translation of the Thesaurus Alexandri, a work on elixirs and amulets, from Greek and Latin into Arabic.
[9] In the Sīrat, Alexander is a son of Dārāb, a prince of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia, and Nāhīd, daughter of King Philip II of Macedon.
[10] After returning to Macedon, Alexander comes under the influence of the devil, Iblīs, until he is brought back to the right path by al-Khiḍr, who convinces him he has a divine mission: to convert the whole world to monotheism.
Alexander then constructs the famous wall confining Gog and Magog before setting out for the Land of Darkness to find the Water of Life.
[citation needed] However, he is not depicted as a warrior and conqueror, but as a seeker of truth who eventually finds the Ab-i Hayat (Water of Life).
By the 12th century such important Persian writers as Nizami Ganjavi (from Ganja in modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan) were making him the subject of their epic poems.
Another significant version was the 13th-century Ayina-i Iskandari (Alexandrine Mirror) of Amir Khusrau[12] and the 15th-century Kherad-nâme (Book of Alexandrian Intelligence) of Jâmi.
[13] The Muslim traditions also elaborated the legend that Alexander the Great had been the companion of Aristotle and the direct student of Plato.
[14] The material was later incorporated into Qisas Al-Anbiya (Tales of the Prophets):By the turn of the first millennium C.E., the romance of Alexander in Arabic had a core centered on the Greek legendary material ... Interwoven later into this narrative in the Tales of the Prophets literature were episodes of an apparent Arab-Islamic elaboration: the construction of a great barrier to keep the people of Gog and Magog from harassing the people of the civilized world until Judgement Day, the voyage to the end of the Earth to witness the sun set in a pool of boiling mud, and Dhu al-Qarnayn's expedition into the Land of Darkness in search of the Fountain of Life accompanied by his companion Khidir ("the Green-One").
The descendants of Muslims who converted to Christianity were called the Moriscos (meaning "Moor-like") and were suspecting of secretly practicing Islam.
In one of his earliest historical works, entitled Ghilālat al-Zamān and written in 1877 the Tatar theologian, Shihāb al-Dīn Marjānī wrote that according to Arabic and other Muslim writings, as well as according to popular legends, the city of Bulghar was founded by Alexander the Great.
The best known Minangkabau ruler, Adityavarman, who ruled over Sumatra between 1347 and 1374 AD claimed for himself the name Maharajadiraja, 'a great lord of kings.'
