Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives ed. by Markus Stock (review)

Alexander the Great became a bearer of meaning for every culture of Europe and the Middle East in the millennium and a half following his death, as a result of the wide dissemination of the Greek Alexander Romance. The "Middle Ages" of this volume comprise not only medieval Europe but also the Persian and Arabic traditions current in the same centuries. Markus Stock's introduction points to some of the ways medieval writers found Alexander useful for their purposes, which were often didactic. Alexander is an agent of God in the succession of ancient empires, his travels are a repository of geographical knowledge, and, as a student of Aristotle, Alexander can be used to convey esoteric wisdom as well as scientific knowledge.

The individual articles explore these matters from different perspectives. The opening articles, by Thomas Hahn and Emily Reiner, consider the way in which Alexander, even as a historical figure, transcended national and ethnic boundaries. Reiner finds it problematic that Alexander as a "Greek" is favoured by medieval authors even though in the legends of Troy they regard the Greeks as the villains. The argument exemplifies the impossibility of fitting Alexander into a single pattern.

The most rewarding articles are those that analyse the metamorphoses of the theme in a particular linguistic tradition. The two articles by Ruth Nisse and Shamma Boyarin examine the Jewish versions; as Boyarin says, "no other medieval text was translated into Hebrew from so many different languages so many times" from the tenth-century Yosippon to the fifteenthcentury translations of the Historia de Proeliis. While the Hebrew versions are embedded in the concerns of medieval Jews and bring to the fore Alexander's legendary support of the Jewish religion and his role in the end of days, the king is also a vehicle for esoteric wisdom; even his murder of Nectanebo is motivated by a desire to disprove astrology.

Arab writers also found ways of embedding Alexander in sacred history, as Christine Chism shows. First appearing in Sura 18 of the Qur'an, Alexander in the Qissat Dhu'l-qarnain fails in his quest for the water of life but still becomes an instrument of God, revealing the divine presence in the world before the coming of Islam and its variety. The world's wonders are also a theme of the Malay version studied by Su Fang Ng, which emerged as a nationalist reaction to the Portuguese interlopers. Like the Qissat, the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain provided an Islamic way of understanding even the strangest phenomena of the world.

Klaus Grubmuller's article shows how German versions of the Alexander story from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries move from a concern with Christian doctrine, through an emphasis on courtly context and the speculum principis tradition, to a humanized, "domesticated" Alexander. In Rudolf von Ems and in Seifrit, he is a flawless hero; in the Seelentrost, his fate is a warning of the vanity of the world; and, in Hartlieb, the hero learns that his fate is not in his own hands and that the ruler needs the guidance of God. Sylvia Parsons's study of Walter of Chatillon similarly reveals a hero who proves no match for fortune.

The very rich Persian tradition receives a single study by Julia Rubanovich, which focuses on the Candace episode and the Jewish influence on the "Feast of Gems," where Alexander is taught restraint. Faustina Doufikar-Aerts's article focuses on the iconographic program of a single manuscript of the Sirat al-Malik Iskandar, perhaps by a Coptic painter, which is a "fusion text" containing elements of Syriac and Jewish origin.

Two articles on iconography conclude the volume: Maud Perez-Simon shows how the encyclopaedic tendencies of the Roman d'Alexandre en prose are reflected in the regular suite of images that illustrate it, while Thomas Noll examines some paintings, sculptures, and tapestries to show the movement from the chivalric to the moral exemplary presentation of the king...