Syriac Alexander Legend

Composed in Syriac in northern Mesopotamia, the Syriac Alexander Legend, also known as the Neṣḥānā (Syriac: ܢܨܚܢܐ, "triumph"),[1] is a legendary account of the exploits of Alexander the Great. It is independent of the Alexander Romance and served as a source for apocalyptic literature in the 7th century. It is the earliest work to mention the fusion of Alexander's gate with the Biblical apocalyptic tradition of Gog and Magog.

Dating

The composition of the Legend is commonly attributed to north Mesopotamia around 629–630 CE, shortly after Heraclius defeated the Sasanians.[2] However, some have argued that the Syriac recension was originally produced in an earlier form in the early 6th century and was updated in the early 7th century in light of then-contemporary apocalyptic themes.[3] Another position taken up by some scholars is that the text was composed around the Byzantine-Sassanid events surrounding the year 614.[4] There is also a poem (often wrongly attributed to Jacob of Serugh) based on the Syriac Legend but written slightly later. Finally, there is a shorter version of the Legend and an original brief biography of Alexander written in Syriac.[2]

Content and influence

Gog and Magog
Gog and Magog consuming humans.
—Thomas de Kent's Roman de toute chevalerie, Paris manuscript, 14th century

The Legend is considered the first work to connect the Alexander Gates with the idea that Gog and Magog are destined to play a role in the apocalypse.[5] In the Legend, Gog (Syriac: ܓܘܓ, gwg) and Magog (Syriac: ܡܓܘܓܵ, mgwg) appear as kings of Hunnish nations.[lower-alpha 1][6] The legend claims that Alexander carved prophecies on the face of the Gate, marking a date for when these Huns, consisting of 24 nations, will breach the Gate and subjugate the greater part of the world.[lower-alpha 2][7][8]

The Gog and Magog material, which passed into a lost Arabic version,[9] and the Ethiopic and later Oriental versions of the Alexander Romance.[10][lower-alpha 3] It has also been found to closely resemble the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn in the Qur'an (see: Alexander the Great in the Quran).

The Pseudo-Methodius, written originally in Syriac, is considered the source of the Gog and Magog tale incorporated into Western versions of the Alexander Romance.[11][12] The Pseudo-Methodius (7th century[13]) is the first source in the Christian tradition for a new element: two mountains moving together to narrow the corridor, which was then sealed with a gate against Gog and Magog. This idea is also in the Quran (609–632 CE[14][15]), and found its way in the Western Alexander Romance.[16]

Western Alexander romances

This Gog and Magog legend is not found in earlier versions of the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, whose oldest manuscript dates to the 3rd century,[lower-alpha 4] but an interpolation into recensions around the 8th century.[lower-alpha 5][18] In the latest and longest Greek version[lower-alpha 6] are described the Unclean Nations, which include the Goth and Magoth as their kings, and whose people engage in the habit of eating worms, dogs, human cadavers and fetuses.[19] They were allied to Belsyrians (Bebrykes,[20] of Bithynia in modern-day North Turkey), and sealed beyond the "Breasts of the North", a pair of mountains fifty days' march away towards the north.[lower-alpha 7][19]

Gog and Magog appear in somewhat later Old French versions of the romance.[lower-alpha 8][21] In the verse Roman d'Alexandre, Branch III, of Lambert le Tort (c. 1170), Gog and Magog ("Gos et Margos", "Got et Margot") were vassals to Porus, king of India, providing an auxiliary force of 400,000 men.[lower-alpha 9] Routed by Alexander, they escaped through a defile in the mountains of Tus (or Turs),[lower-alpha 10] and were sealed by the wall erected there, to last until the advent of the Antichrist.[lower-alpha 11][22][23] Branch IV of the poetic cycle tells that the task of guarding Gog and Magog, as well as the rule of Syria and Persia was assigned to Antigonus, one of Alexander's successors.[24]

See also

Notes
  1. Also called Christian Legend concerning Alexander, ed. tr. by E. A. Wallis Budge. It has a long full-title, which in shorthand reads "An exploit of Alexander.. how.. he made a gate of iron, and shut it [against] the Huns".
  2. The first invasion, prophesied to occur 826 years after Alexander predicted, has been worked out to fall on 1 October 514; the second invasion on A.D. 629 (Boyle 1979, p. 124).
  3. The Ethiopic version derives from the lost Arabic version (Boyle 1979, p. 133).
  4. The oldest manuscript is recension α. The material is not found in the oldest Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Syriac versions.[17]
  5. Recension ε
  6. Recension γ
  7. Alexander's prayer caused the mountains to move nearer, making the pass narrower, facilitating his building his gate. This is the aforementioned element first seen in pseudo-Methodius.
  8. Gog and Magog being absent in the Alexandreis (1080) of Walter of Châtillon.
  9. Note the change in loyalties. According to the Greek version, Gog and Magog served the Belsyrians, whom Alexander fought them after completing his campaign against Porus.
  10. "Tus" in Iran, near the Caspian south shore, known as Susia to the Greeks, is a city in the itinerary of the historical Alexander. Meyer does not make this identification, and suspects a corruption of mons Caspius etc.
  11. Branch III, laisses 124–128.

References
  1. "Search Entry. www.assyrianlanguages.org
  2. Ciancaglini, Claudia A. (2001). "The Syriac Version of the Alexander Romance". Le Muséon. 114 (1–2): 121–140. doi:10.2143/MUS.114.1.302.
  3. Stephen Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, University of Pennsylvania Press 2018, 79-86.
  4. Zishan Ghaffar, Der Koran in Seimen Religions, Brill, 2019, pp. 156-166.
  5. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 17, "The episode of Alexander's building a wall against Gog and Magog, however, is not found in the oldest Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac versions of the Romance. Though the Alexander Romance was decisive for the spreading of the new and supernatural image of Alexander the king in East and West, the barrier episode has not its origin in this text. The fusion of the motif of Alexander's barrier with the Biblical tradition of the apocalyptic peoples Gog and Magog appears in fact for the first time in the so called Syriac Alexander Legend. This text is a short appendix attached to the Syriac manuscripts of the Alexander Romance.".
  6. Budge 1889, II, p. 150.
  7. Budge 1889, II, pp. 153–54.
  8. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, pp. 17–21.
  9. Boyle 1979, p. 123.
  10. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 32.
  11. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 30.
  12. Stoneman 1991, p. 29.
  13. Griffith, Sidney Harrison (2008). The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780691130156.
  14. Fazlur Rehman Shaikh (2001). Chronology of Prophetic Events. Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd. p. 50.
  15. Living Religions: An Encyclopaedia of the World's Faiths, Mary Pat Fisher, 1997, page 338, I.B. Tauris Publishers.
  16. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, p. 21.
  17. Van Donzel & Schmidt 2010, pp. 17, 21.
  18. Stoneman 1991, pp. 28–32.
  19. Stoneman 1991, pp. 185–187.
  20. Anderson 1932, p. 35.
  21. Westrem 1998, p. 57.
  22. Armstrong 1937, VI, p. 41.
  23. Meyer 1886, summary of §11 (Michel ed., pp. 295–313), pp. 169–170; appendix II on Gog and Magog episode, pp. 386–389; on third branch, pp. 213, 214.
  24. Meyer 1886, p. 207.

Sources

Further reading
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