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53-475: Among the projects Nöldeke collaborated on was Michael Jan de Goeje ’s published edition of al-Tabari 's Tarikh ("Universal History"), for which he translated the Sassanid -era section. This translation remains of great value, particularly for the extensive supplementary commentary. His numerous students included Charles Cutler Torrey , Louis Ginzberg and Friedrich Zacharias Schwally . He entrusted Schwally with

106-578: A 15th-century version by Johannes Hartlieb ), Slavonic , Romanian , Hungarian , Irish, and more. The Syriac Alexander Legend , composed either in ~630 shortly after Heraclius defeated the Persians or in the mid-6th century during the reign of Justinian I , contains additional motifs not found in the earliest Greek version of the Romance , including the apocalypticization of the wall built against Gog and Magog . Subsequent Middle Eastern recensions of

159-632: A Pseudo-Aristoteliean treatise which became immensely popular and was translated directly from the Arabic into many other (including European) languages. Both Alexander and Aristotle became important figures in Islamic wisdom literature, such as in the chapter dedicated to Alexander in the 9th-century Ādāb al-Falāsifa ( Sayings of the Philosophers ) written in the name of the famous Christian translator and physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq . Other texts in this tradition from

212-482: A complete translation of the volume into English was published. The Nöldeke Chronology is a "canonical ordering" of the 114 surahs of the Qur'an according to the sequence of revelation. Intended to aid theological, literary, and historical scholarship of Qur'anic exegesis by enhancing structural coherence. The Nöldeke Chronology has been adopted for general guidance by some schools of current scholarship. Nöldeke considered

265-487: A dream in which he took a wax seal and sealed up the womb of his wife. The seal bore the image of a lion. The seer Aristander interpreted this to mean that Olympias was pregnant, since men do not seal up what is empty, and that she would bring forth a son who would be bold and lion-like. After Philip took Potidaea in 356 BC, he received word that his horse had just won at the Olympic games, and that Parmenion had defeated

318-694: 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. Arabic was introduced as the court language of the caliphate during the Umayyad Caliphate around the year 700. One of the first texts translated into Arabic was the Rasāʾil Arisṭāṭālīsa ilāʾl-Iskandar ( The Letters of Aristotle to Alexander or

371-838: A first-century historian, describes the Gates of Alexander (and is the first to mention them after Pliny the Elder ). Josephus describes these gates in the context of a barbarian group called the Scythians, for whom the boundary prevents their incursion. Elsewhere, Josephus also clarifies that the Scythians were known among the Jews as Magogites, descendants of the Magog described in the Hebrew Bible. These references occur in two different works. The Jewish War states that

424-786: A household name throughout the Middle Ages . Another very popular Latin version was the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon . Translations would subsequently be made into all the major languages of Europe as versions of the Alexander romance became the most popular form of medieval European literature after the Bible , such as Old French (12th century), Middle Scots ( The Buik of Alexander , 13th century), Italian , Spanish (the Libro de Alexandre ), Central German ( Lamprecht 's Alexanderlied , and

477-576: A judge and was a Hamburg senator during the Weimar period . He died in Karlsruhe in 1930. The Geschichte , a primarily philological work written in German , emerged out of his dissertation he began during his university studies, which was completed in 1856 and titled De origine et compositione surarum qoranicarum ipsiusque Qorani . Compared to earlier works studying the Quran by Western writers, Nöldeke uncoupled

530-452: A professor at the University of Kiel and from 1872 at the University of Strasbourg until he retired aged 70. Many of his students became prominent researchers in their own right, including Eduard Sachau , Carl Brockelmann , Christiaan Snouck-Hurgronje , Edward Denison Ross , and Charles Cutler Torrey . Nöldeke had ten children, six of whom predeceased him. His son Arnold Nöldeke became

583-584: Is occasionally called a gizistag in the Shahnameh. Theodor Nöldeke has also inferred the existence of a now-lost Middle Persian recension of the Alexander Romance , which he believed was translated into Syriac as the Syriac Alexander Romance , but more recent scholarship has cast doubt on the existence of such an intermediary. Islamic-era Persian accounts of the Alexander legend, known as

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636-664: Is overwhelmingly negative, as in the Book of Arda Viraf and the Bundahishn . In these texts, Alexander is the enemy of Iran and of true religion. For example, the former text at one point says: Then the accursed, wicked Evil Spirit deluded the accursed ( gizistag ) Alexander the Roman, who lived in Egypt, in order to cause the people to have doubt about this religion". Early Islamic representations of Alexander retain some vestige of such views, as Alexander

689-617: Is pseudonymously attributed to Callisthenes , a court historian of Alexander the Great. For this reason, its author is usually referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes. In premodern times, the Alexander Romance underwent more than 100 translations, elaborations, and derivations in 25 languages, including almost all European vernaculars as well as in every language from the Islamicized regions of Asia and Africa, from Mali to Malaysia . In Europe,

742-465: Is sometimes not depicted as a warrior and conqueror, but as a seeker of truth who eventually finds the Ab-i Hayat (Water of Life). Persian sources on the Alexander legend devised a mythical genealogy for him whereby his mother was a concubine of Darius II , making him the half-brother of the last Achaemenid king, Darius III . By the 12th century such important writers as Nezami Ganjavi were making him

795-497: Is the one to discover it as opposed to one of his servants. Wishing to see the world, Alexander was thought to have descended into the depths of the ocean in a sort of diving bell , which would let him see the world from above. To do this he harnessed two large griffins between which he was seated. He would hold meat skewers above their heads to entice them to keep flying further up. Around 1260, Bertold von Regensburg preached, that like Alexander believed that "he could take down

848-514: Is the son of Dara/Darab and his wife Nahid, who is described to be the daughter of "Filfus of Rûm " i.e. "Philip the Greek" ( cf. Philip II of Macedon ). Alexander the Great was claimed as the ancestor of the Hunza rulers. In the third-century AD, a quantity of legendary and historical material about Alexander the Great coalesced into the production of a text known as the Alexander Romance . The text

901-609: The Iskandarnameh , combined the Pseudo-Callisthenes and Syriac material about Alexander, some of which is found in the Qur'an, with Sasanian Persian ideas about Alexander the Great. This is an ironic outcome considering Zoroastrian Persia's hostility to the national enemy who finished the Achaemenid Empire , but was also directly responsible for centuries of Persian domination by Hellenistic "foreign rulers". However, he

954-624: The Syriac Alexander Legend . It would become the main source for Arabic-language historians who wanted to discuss the role of Alexander in pre-Islamic history. For example, the Kitāb al-Akhbār al-Ṭiwal ( Book of Comprehensive History ) of Abu Hanifa Dinawari (d. 896), itself based on an older version in Pseudo-Aṣma‛ī's Nihāyat al-Arab ( Ultimate Aim ), includes a short history of the kingdom of Alexander in this tradition. Other examples include

1007-798: The 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica . De Goeje's name is preserved in that of the Stichting de Goeje which subsidises the publication of academic studies relating to the Middle East. Alexander the Great in legend The vast conquests of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great quickly inspired the formation and diffusion of legendary material about his deity, journeys, and tales. These appeared shortly after his death, and some may have already begun forming during his lifetime. Common themes and symbols among legends about Alexander include

1060-661: The Alexander Romance was forgotten until Leo the Archpriest discovered a Greek copy in Constantinople while he was on a diplomatic missions. He produced a translation into Latin titled the Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni regis , which became the basis of the far more successful and expanded version known as the Historia de Proeliis , which went through three recensions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and made Alexander

1113-578: The Epistolary Romance ), which consist of a letter of apocryphal letters meant to confirm Alexander's reputation as a wise ruler. It was composed during the reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 724–743) from Greek sources like the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem . Part of this text became a constituent of the Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār ( Book of Secret of Secrets ) by Yahya ibn al-Batriq (d. 815),

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1166-704: The Gates of Alexander , the Horns of Alexander , and the Gordian Knot . In the third century AD, an anonymous author writing in the name of Alexander's court historian Callisthenes (commonly referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes) authored the Greek Alexander Romance . This text would spawn a genre of literature about the legends and exploits of Alexander across centuries, going through over one hundred versions in premodern times and appearing in almost every language in both European and Islamic worlds. King Philip had

1219-567: The Romance appeared in an anonymous work entitled the Iskandarnameh , likely dating to the eleventh century. Nizami Ganjavi would then compose his own Iskandarnameh under significant influence from the representations of Ferdowsi's chronicle. The next major Persian version was the Ayina-i Iskandari ( Alexandrine Mirror ) of the poet Amir Khusrau , who began first by surveying the earlier works of Ferdowsi and Nizami before proceeding into his own portrait. The final major Persian version

1272-661: The Tārīkh ( Historiae ) of al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 897), the al-Rusul waʾl-Mulūk ( History of the Prophets and Kings , or simply Annales ) of al-Tabbari (d. 923), the Murūj al-Dhahab ( Meadows of Gold ) of al-Masudi (d. 956), and the Naẓm al-Jawhar ( String of Pearls ) of Eutychius of Alexandria . The earliest full-length Arabic Alexander Romance was the Qissat al-Iskandar of ʿUmara ibn Zayd, composed in

1325-483: The 114 Surahs: In 1875, near the very beginning of the academic study of the religion of Mandaeism , Nöldeke published the Mandäische grammatik , a monumental work of Mandaean grammar that was of such philological depth that it remains the standard work on the subject to this day. It was also the basis of the subsequent Mandaic Dictionary by E. S. Drower . In 1890, Nöldeke initiated the study of Alexander legends in

1378-534: The Alexander legend were generated in the tradition of the Syriac recension, including versions in Arabic , Persian ( Iskandarnameh ), Ethiopic , Hebrew (in the first part of Sefer HaAggadah ), Ottoman Turkish (14th century), and Middle Mongolian (13th-14th century). Alexander is often identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn , literally "The Two-Horned One" , mentioned in the Quran , Al-Kahf 18:83–94. Similarities between

1431-571: The Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brooch carries a similar theme. In medieval Thessalonica , the largest city in the region of Macedonia , a popular legend arose among the inhabitants of the city connecting Alexander with the sculptures of a Roman-era portico of the city known as Las Incantadas ("the enchanted ones"), which had been erected long after his death. According to the legend, a Thracian king once visited Alexander, and his queen fell in love with him. They arranged to meet at night next to

1484-581: The Arabic tradition with the publication of his Beiträge zur geschichte des Alexanderromans . He contributed frequently to the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft , the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen and the Expositor . Michael Jan de Goeje Michael Jan de Goeje (August 13, 1836 – May 17, 1909) was a Dutch orientalist focusing on Arabia and Islam. Michael Jan de Goeje

1537-630: The Caspian Gates being breached by Scythians allied to Tiberius during the Armenian War . The Talmud also has many legends relating to Alexander, For example, it mentions that the Samaritans conspired for the destruction of the temple, but Alexander prostrated himself at the feet of the high priest Simon the Just . It also mentions many other legends on Alexander, such as: The Ten Questions of Alexander to

1590-545: The Illyrians. Then he got word of the birth of Alexander. The seers told him that a son whose birth coincided with three victories would always be victorious. When the young Alexander tamed the steed Bucephalus , his father noted that Macedonia would not be large enough for him. When Alexander went to Egypt, he was given the title of Pharaoh and the epithet "Son of Ra " (the Egyptian sun deity). In 331 BC in Egypt, he would visit

1643-483: The Quranic account and the Syriac Alexander Legend were also found in recent research (see Alexander in the Qur'an ). The Arabic tradition also elaborated the legend that Alexander the Great had been the companion of Aristotle and Plato . Persian versions of the Alexander Romance began with depictions covering three sections of Ferdowsi 's Shahnameh ( Book of Kings ). The first full length Persian recension of

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1696-850: The Sages of the South, his Journey to the Regions of Darkness, the Amazons, the Gold Bread, Alexander at the Gate of Paradise, his ascent into the air, and Descent into the Sea. The Talmud also records a story that describes Alexander seeking the Fountain of Life , which also has versions appear in the Alexander Romance and in the Syriac Song of Alexander . In the version as it appears in

1749-501: The Talmud, Alexander washes a fish in a spring which immediately jumps to life upon being washed. Realizing that he has discovered the Fountain, he washes his own face in it, though the significance of this is not explained in the story. The Talmudic version differs from the other versions, insofar as only in the Talmud does Alexander succeed in accessing the Fountain, and in this story, Alexander

1802-464: The chapter Legends, the first legend is about Tsar Aleksandar seeking the Immortal Water. The tale is recorded in what seems to be an Ohrid-Struga dialect. In the legend, Alexander finds the immortal water behind after walking three days in darkness, behind two mountains that open and close. He leaves the bottle with immortal water to his sister, who breaks it by accident. Alexander chases his sister to

1855-678: The continuation of his standard work "The History of the Qur’ān ". Nöldeke was born in Harburg , (Hamburg today). In 1853 he graduated from the Gymnasium Georgianum Lingen , Emsland , and went on to study at the University of Göttingen under Heinrich Ewald , and later at the University of Vienna , the University of Leiden and the Humboldt University of Berlin . In 1864 he became

1908-538: The highest stars from the sky by hand, so you too would like to go up in the air if you could". But the story showed where such a climb would lead, and proved that the great Alexander "was one of the greatest fools the world has ever seen". Rice and Boardman have both argued that the figure on the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel intended to represent this scene in order to represent the notion of one coming to knowledge through sight. Boardman has also argued that

1961-488: The highest value to scholars; the most important being his great edition of Tabari . Though highly averse to politics, he took a keen interest in the municipal affairs of Leiden and made a special study of elementary education. He took the leading part in the International Congress of Orientalists at Algiers in 1905. He was a member of the Institut de France , was awarded the German Order of Merit , and received an honorary doctorate of Cambridge University . At his death he

2014-412: The iron gates Alexander erected were controlled by the king of Hyrcania (on the south edge of the Caspian), and allowing passage of the gates to the Alans (whom Josephus considered a Scythic tribe) resulted in the sack of Media . Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews contains two relevant passages, one giving the ancestry of Scythians as descendants of Magog son of Japheth , and another that refers to

2067-525: The late 8th or early 9th century. The other prominent Arabic versions would be the Qissat Dhulqarnayn (9th century), a second Qissat Dhulqarnayn in the Ara'is al-majalis fi Qisas al-anbiya' ( Book of Prophets ) of al-Tha'labi (11th century), the Hadith Dhulqarnayn (15th century), the Sīrat al-Iskandar (15th century), the Sirat al-malek Eskandar Dhu’ l-Qarneyn , and the Tārīkh al-Iskandar al-Makdūni ( History of Alexander of Macedon ) (17th century). Pre-Islamic Persian tradition of Alexander

2120-400: The oracle of the Siwa Oasis (also known as the Oasis of Amun-Ra). It was at that point, legend holds, that Alexander began to refer to Zeus Ammon as his true father. Returning to Memphis after the oracle visit, he was informed that the prophetess of the Apollonian oracle, the Erythraean Sibyl , had also confirmed his divine paternity as the son of Zeus. Many Alexander legends are found in

2173-478: The portico, but the king learnt of this, and had his magician bewitch the portico so that everyone who passed near would be petrified. Alexander was notified not to go by his tutor Aristotle , but the queen and her attendants were not as lucky, and they turned all into sculptures. The king and his magician arrived later to see their work, and they were petrified too. In the Bulgarian folk songs collection published by Dimitar and Konstantin Miladinov in 1861, under

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2226-460: The same time he wrote Mémoires de l'histoire et de la géographie orientales , and edited Expugnatio regionum . In 1883, on the death of Dozy, he became Arabic professor at Leiden, retiring in 1906. Though perhaps not a teacher of the first order, he wielded great influence during his long tenure of the chair not only over his pupils, but over theologians and eastern administrators who attended his lectures. His many editions of Arabic texts are of

2279-443: The sea, where she escapes and turns into a dolphin. With the Greek Alexander Romance and its translation into numerous languages including Armenian , Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, and more, an entire genre of literature was dedicated to the exploits of Alexander in both Christian and Muslim realms. Alexander was also the one most frequently identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn ( Arabic : ذو القرنين; lit. "The Two-Horned One"),

2332-470: The study of the text from inquiries into the life of Muhammad and, unlike predecessors of his such as William Muir , did not have a missionary zeal. Instead, Nöldeke studied the Quran for its own sake. One of the most important aspects of Nöldeke's argument was his periodisation of the Quranic surahs into a tripartite Meccan phase followed by a Medinan phase (an idea already conceived by his predecessor, Gustav Weil ). In this, Nöldeke, though he did not follow

2385-399: The subject of their epic poems . The Romance and the Syriac Legend are also the sources of incidents in Ferdowsi 's Shahnameh . In the Shahnameh , the Persian epic, Kai Bahman 's elder son Dara(b) is killed in battle with Alexander the Great , that is, Dara/Darab is identified as Darius III and which then makes Bahman a figure of the 4th century BC. In another tradition, Alexander

2438-420: The surahs from the perspective of content and stylistic development and linguistic origination to rearrange them in historical sequence of revelation. According to his system Sura 21: “The Prophets,” – 21st of 114 surahs in the Qur'an – is renumbered '65'. His chronology further divided the surahs into two periods: The Meccan (in three phases), and the Medina. The Nöldeke Chronology of the Qur'an : Four groups of

2491-407: The tenth century onward included Ṣiwān al-Ḥikma ( Chest of Wisdom ) of Abu Sulayman Sijistani , the Al-Ḥikma al-Khālida ( Everlasting Wisdom ) of Miskawayh , and the Al-Kalim al-Rūḥānīya fīʾl-Ḥikam al-Yūnānīya ( Spiritual Sayings about Greek Maxims ) of Ibn Hindu . The Alexander Romance literature would enter into the Arabic world through its Syriac language recension (version), known as

2544-419: The traditional chronological division of surahs exactly, did follow it in some detail. At the same time, Nöldeke also considered his division to be malleable and tentative to a degree as opposed to absolute and deciding. Though Nöldeke's work has been followed closely by some and rejected by others, it has been so influential that at least one scholar has referred to his work as "the rock of our church". In 2013,

2597-471: The writings of the Greek historian Plutarch , such as that Alexander was born in the same day that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burnt down, during which the god Artemis was too preoccupied with his birth to pay the requisite attention needed to save her burning temple. Later in life when Alexander offered to pay for the temples reconstruction, he was informed that it was not appropriate for gods to dedicate offerings to other gods. In another anecdote, it

2650-552: Was born in Dronrijp , Friesland . He devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic , under the guidance of Reinhart Dozy and Theodor Juynboll , to whom he was afterwards an intimate friend and colleague. He took his degree of doctor at Leiden in 1860, and then studied for a year in Oxford , where he examined and collated the Bodleian manuscripts of al-Idrisi (part being published in 1866, in collaboration with Dozy, as Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne ). About

2703-408: Was president of the newly formed International Association of Academies of Science . He became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1869. Among his chief works are: Fr. translation: Leyde, 1889 ; repr. Francfort/Main, 1992. He was also the chief editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (vols. i.-iii.), and contributed many articles to periodicals. He wrote for

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2756-456: Was said that the priestess of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi exclaimed to him "You are invincible o young!" Claudius Aelianus in the Characteristics of Animals wrote that Scythians say that there were horned donkeys, and their horns were holding water from the river Styx . Adding that Sopater brought one of these horns to Alexander, then Alexander set up the horn as a votive offering at Delphi , with an inscription beneath it. Josephus ,

2809-421: Was the Kherad-nâme ( Book of Alexandrian Intelligence ) of Jâmi composed in the 15th century, though numerous other versions would also continue to be written. The Malay Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain was written about Alexander the Great as Dhul-Qarnayn and the ancestry of several Southeast Asian royal families is traced from Iskandar Zulkarnain, through Raja Rajendra Chola (Raja Suran, Raja Chola) in

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