Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
*This is an updated, shorter version of the Italian text Gli antecedenti del Romanzo di
Alessandro, published in the volume R.B. FINAZZI - A. VALVO (eds.), La diffusione
dell'eredit classica nell'et tardoantica e medievale. Atti del Seminario internazionale
tenuto a Roma-Napoli, 25-27 settembre 1997, Alessandria, 1998, p. 55-93, which I refer
the reader to for further details. I wish to thank Prof. G.J. Reinink for encouraging me to
write an English version of the text, and Prof. B. Coulie, for accepting to print it in this
prestigious journal.
122 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
between the 7th and 9th century AD, of an Arabic version of the original
Greek (BUDGE, History, p. lxi-lxii).
Th. Nldeke rejects this thesis in a lengthy and erudite study entitled
Beitrge zur Geschichte des Alexanderromans (Vienna, 1890 = NL-
DEKE, Beitrge). Instead he claims that the Syriac version must have
been based on a lost intermediary Pahlavi translation of the original
Greek, dating from the late Sasanian era (circa 6th-7th century AD).
With the exception of some cursory disagreements1, confined to Ori-
entalist circles, Nldeke's idea was accepted almost unanimously by
scholars2; all philological literature on the Alexander Romance takes for
granted the existence of the Pahlavi version, though this was a hypoth-
esis formulated at a time when Pahlavi philology and Iranian dialectol-
ogy were still in the early stages.
We should like to re-examine here, more systematically than has been
done to date, the validity of the evidence advanced by Nldeke to prove
the existence of a Pahlavi (or rather Middle Persian)3 intermediary ver-
1
For example, Samuel Fraenkel's recension of BUDGE, History, in Z.D.M.G., 45
(1891), p. 309-330, especially p. 313-322 (= FRAENKEL, Recension) and R.N. FRYE, Two
Iranian Notes, in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, vol. I, Leiden, 1985,
p. 185-188 (= FRYE, Two Iranian Notes).
2
Cfr, for example, K. BROCKELMANN (et al.), Geschichte der christlichen Litteraturen
des Orients, Leipzig, 1909, p. 45; A. BAUMSTARK, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur,
Bonn, 1922, p. 125 (= BAUMSTARK, Geschichte); C.A. NALLINO, Tracce di opere greche
giunte agli Arabi per trafila pehlevica, in A Volume of Oriental Studies presented to
E.G. Browne, Cambridge, 1922, p. 345-363 (= NALLINO, Tracce di opere greche);
E. YARSHATER, Iranian National History, in The Cambridge History of Iran, III/1, Cam-
bridge, 1983, p. 472; S. BROCK, Syriac Perspective on Late Antiquity, London, 1984, II,
p. 8 (= BROCK, Syriac Perspective); M. BOYCE - F. GRENET, A History of Zoroastrianism,
vol. III, Leiden-Kln, 1991, p. 60 n. 40 (= BOYCE - GRENET, A History); P. ZIEME, Alex-
ander According to an Old Turkish Legend, in La Persia e l'Asia centrale da Alessandro
al X secolo. Atti del convegno dei Lincei, Roma 9-12 Novembre 1994, Rome, 1996, p. 25
and n. 2, etc.
3
It is advisable to use the term Middle Persian to refer to the official language of
the kingdom of Iran from the 3rd to the 7th century AD, i.e. the language of the south-
western group originally only spoken in the Fars area. Middle Persian includes Pahlavi,
namely, the Middle Persian of Zoroastrian literature (written in the cursive script of
books) and of the translation of the Christian Psalter (for which a Pahlavi script was used
that had a more archaic ductus than that of books), but also includes epigraphical Middle
Persian (in monumental script, or parsik) and Manichean Middle Persian (in Manichean
script, namely a variant of the Syriac estrangelo). In the oldest terminology, the one used,
for example, by Nldeke and by NALLINO, Tracce di opere greche, Pahlavi coincides with
Middle Persian; the need to always distinguish, and not only at the level of terminology,
between Pahlavi and Middle Persian is underlined by W. SUNDERMANN, Mittelpersisch, in
R. SCHMITT (ed.), Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Wiesbaden, 1989, p. 138: Mit-
telpersisch ist als Sprachbezeichnung der lteren Benennung Pahlavi [] vorzuziehen,
weil dieser Name in der europischen Wissenschaft ursprnglich und berwiegend das
zoroastrische Mittelpersisch bezeichnet und berdies in der Form pahlavik bisweilen fr
Partisch verwendet wurde. As far as Nldeke is concerned, what is interesting is the
THE SYRIAC VERSION OF THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE 123
2.Nldeke's hypothesis
5
NLDEKE, Beitrge, p. 14. In actual fact, the Pahlavi grapheme to which Nldeke al-
ludes, that can stand for both l and r, mostly represents r. When it represents l, in the
manuscripts this sign has a diacritic sign added to it (a little dash in the Iranian manu-
scripts, a little circle in those from India) or the grapheme is written twice: cfr H.S.
NYBERG, A Manual of Pahlavi, vol. I, Wiesbaden, 1964, p. 131 (= NYBERG, A Manual).
As regards r, it can also be represented by another grapheme, namely the sign that also
stands for n, w or is used to indicate the end of a word.
6
On this subject and, in particular, on the type of translation called by two interpret-
ers cfr M. MANCINI, L'esotismo nel lessico italiano, Viterbo, 1992, p. 71-75 (from Arab
THE SYRIAC VERSION OF THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE 125
read and translated the text out loud from Greek into Syriac and the sec-
ond transcribed it, and we also assume that both of them knew the lan-
guage, but were not well acquainted with Greek culture, it is understand-
able that proper nouns, being devoid of formal-semantic links in the two
translators' linguistic competence, might be subject to all kinds of dis-
tortions.
Among the many lexical arguments Nldeke advances to demonstrate
the existence of an intermediary Pahlavi text, we should consider the
cases in which the Syriac text contains nouns that are evidently Persian,
but that are not found, or found in a different form, in the Greek original,
such as, for example, Pariok, the name of a brigand (Syriac prywg,
BUDGE, History, p. 207, 6, 8, 12 and 14; 208, 6, 8 and 9)7; or Greek geo-
graphical names of regions, cities and rivers in Iran translated into
Syriac with their corresponding Persian names (NLDEKE, Beitrge, p.
15; cfr FRAENKEL, Recension, p. 318). However, if we exclude the cases
in which glosses of the type the word x, which is y in Persian (on
which see below) and a certain number of Persian proper nouns, the
number of loan words is very small, or at least not bigger than the
number of Iranian loan words found in any Syriac text. Therefore, the
presence of a certain number of Iranian loan words in the Syriac Alexan-
der Romance do not provide reliable evidence to support the hypothesis
of an intermediary Middle Persian version. Most of these loan words are
in everyday use in Syriac: cfr, e.g., !"#$%& nsyr nasira hunt8;
'(#) pyg paiga infantry9; instead *+,-&+, qwndqwr
into scientific Latin via a Romance language) and bibliography, and M.-Th. D'ALVERNY,
Les traductions deux interprtes, d'arabe en langue vernaculaire et de langue
vernaculaire en latin, in Traduction et traducteurs au Moyen ge. Actes du Colloque in-
ternational du CNRS, organis Paris, les 26-28 mai 1986, Paris, 1989, p. 193-206. See
also W.B. HENNING, Mitteliranisch, in Handbuch der Orientalistik, Iranistik, I, Leiden,
1958, p. 33 (= HENNING, Mitteliranisch).
7
Sehr merkwrdig ist der, nur im Syr. vorkommende, Bandenfhrer .+/") 207 f.:
denn das kann doch kaum etwas anderes sein, als ein Reflex des Ksnschen Huptlings
Parik, der ums Jahr 595 Vasall des persischen Gegenknigs Wistahm ward; sehr lange
nachher htte man diesen Namen wohl nicht mehr behalten (NLDEKE, Beitrge, p. 16).
See also F. JUSTI, Iranisches Namenbuch, Marburg, 1985 (reprint. Hildesheim, 1963), p.
243, s.v. Pariowk; Parth. paryog/paryoz means victory' (see A. GHILAIN, Essai sur la
langue parthe, Louvain, 1939, p. 63).
8
BUDGE, History, 107, 4; cfr Pahlavi naxcir (NYBERG, A Manual, vol. II, 1974, s.v.);
see K. BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum, Halle an der Saale, 19282 (photographic reprint,
Hildesheim, 1995; = BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum), p. 424a and P. DE LAGARDE,
Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Leipzig, 1866, p. 65 nr. 168 (= DE LAGARDE, Gesammelte
Abhandlungen).
9
BUDGE, History, p. 63, 1 and elsewhere; cfr Pahlavi payg (D.N. MACKENZIE, A Con-
cise Pahlavi Dictionary, London, 1971, s.v. = MACKENZIE, Pahlavi Dictionary; and
NYBERG, A Manual, vol. II, s.v. padak) and New Persian paig messenger'. See
BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum, p. 566a; DE LAGARDE, Gesammelte Abhandlungen,
p. 74 nr. 188 and NLDEKE, Beitrge, p. 14 n. 3.
126 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
11
NLDEKE, Beitrge, p. 16 n. 7, states quite rightly that this term has nothing to do
with the Persian homophone xarbuz (or xarbuza) water-melon: cfr STEINGASS, Persian-
English Dictionary, s.v.); instead in the Supplementum to the Thesaurus Syriacus
MARGOLIOUTH (p. 170a-b) believes that the Syriac karbuza, found only in this passage of
the Syriac Alexander Romance, is actually the transcription of the Persian term that
means cucurbita citrullus, musk melon.
128 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
long close /o/ that is the Greek pronunciation of the digram -ou- of
the accusative plural ending). This is only a hypothesis, but if it were
true it would be further proof of the fact that the Syriac text was
based on the Greek and not on the Pahlavi.
The second case concerns the rhinoceroses. In the Greek text, 80 of
these animals are included in the list of Candace's gifts to Alexander
inokrwtev p (p. 116, 14 KROLL). The Syriac text (BUDGE, History,
p. 211, 15; trans. p. 119) reads: eighty animals which are called rhi-
noceros, and in Persian marqadda or bargadda.
There are several things to be noted here. Firstly, there is the Syriac
translator's uncertainty about what rhinoceroses are called in Persian:
@-A"> 4! @-,"B mrqdd w brgdd, marqadda or bargadda.
Nldeke thinks that one of these two forms may be a later addition, or
that the Syriac translator was thinking of two different pronunciations15.
In fact, in Persian rhinoceros' is kargadan; though the Syriac text does
not have the Persian transcription of the Persian word, but two incorrect
alternatives; only the second of the two (@-A"> brgdd) has a form
that can easily be corrected to become ?&-7"7 krkdn, namely karke-
dana, a Syriac term (cfr BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum, p. 346a-b)
probably borrowed from the Persian kargadan, and found also in Arabic
in the form karkaddanun. The etymon of the term is uncertain; the com-
parison, recorded by Brockelmann, with Akkadian kurkizannu
porculus' is problematic from a semantic point of view. The word does
not seem to be of Semitic origin; more probably it is a loan word from
Indian khagadhenu (female of) rhinoceros', or khagin armed with a
sword; rhinoceros', where khaga- sword', in its turn, is of non-Aryan
origin (see R.L. TURNER, A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan
Languages, London, 1966, nr. 3786ff.; W. LESLAU, Etymological Dic-
tionary of Geez (Classical Ethiopic), Wien, 1987, p. 291, s.v. karkand).
Secondly, Fraenkel (Recension, p. 314) finds it strange that the trans-
lator thought it necessary to gloss a word that can so easily be broken
down into its components, after translating it into Syriac ganz
wrtlich.
The most interesting thing, in effect, is that the word used to designate
rhinoceroses, namely !"#%& C&", qrny nyr qarnay neire, is not
the term that would be used in Syriac for rhinoceroses which would
be the form mentioned above, karkedana , but it is a calque, not found
15
Cfr NLDEKE, Beitrge, p. 16 n. 9: Unser Text bietet zwei verschiedene Entstel-
lungen dieses Wortes; eine davon wird aus der Correctur eines spteren Lesers wieder
verderbt sein. Oder gab der Uebersetzer selbst die beiden mglichen Aussprachen
karkadan und kargadan an?.
130 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
3.Grecisms
In addition to the three or four loan words the scholar considers of lit-
tle importance, and the above-mentioned ones referred to in a note, it
cannot fail to come as a surprise that there are a further fifty or so, which
it is difficult to believe were all assimilated as loan words in the pre-
sumed Pahlavi version and subsequently absorbed by the Syriac version;
all the more so since, in general, Middle Persian unlike Syriac has
very few loan words from Greek. It is true, however, that Greek loan
words in Syriac are not particularly significant as regards the issue that
interests us here (namely, whether the Syriac Alexander Romance was
based directly on a Greek text or whether as Nldeke believes it
was based on an intermediary Pahlavi version), since it is nearly always
a question of common forms in Syriac.
But there are instances of linguistic interference that are far more im-
portant: the calques.
18
Cfr A. PANAINO, Tistrya, II. The Iranian Myth of the Star Sirius, Rome, 1995, p. 61-
86 (= PANAINO, Tistrya); BOYCE - GRENET, A History, III, p. 279-280 (and II, Leiden-
Kln, 1982, p. 204-206; 248).
134 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
worship, and there were Christians among the closest members of his
family and among his most trusted collaborators: his personal physician,
the Monophysite Gabriel of Sinjar; the head of the treasury, Yazdin; his
wife, the Byzantine princess Maria; his favourite, Sirin25, and so on,
were all Christians. Chosroes II, also built several martyria to St.
Sergius who had assisted him in battle and dedicated a gold cross to the
church of Sergiopolis in Syria26.
Some of these influential Christians of the Orient, loyal to the Sasa-
nian sovereigns, but certainly ideologically very far-removed from the
positions of the Zoroastrian priests, may have produced Persian and
Syriac translations of Greek texts: these three languages, Syriac, Greek
and Persian, were all used for ecclesiastical purposes27.
Finally, as far as the translation of Greek scientific works into Middle
Persian during the late Sasanian era is concerned, despite the fact that
none of these works has come down to us, it is virtually certain that they
existed, as Pahlavi28, Byzantine29, and Arabic30 sources testify.
25
According to the Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta (Hist. 5,13,7 ed. C. DE
BOOR, Lipsiae, 1887) Seirm (= Sirin) was not the favourite, but the wife of Chosroes II.
Anonymum Guidi 5 (Chronicum anonymum de ultimis regibus Persarum, ed. and transl.
I. GUIDI, Chronica minora [Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Script. Syri,
ser. 3, t. 4], Paris, 1903) states that Chosroes II's wife was Maria the Roman, who in
abari (Th. NOLDEKE, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sassaniden aus der
arabischen Chronik des Tabari, Leiden, 1879, p. 238) is identified with the daughter of
the Byzantine emperor Maurice. The love affair between the Sasanian sovereign and the
beautiful Armenian Sirin has been immortalized by Nezami, who, in 1180, wrote the
poem Xosrow-o-Sirin, the second in his Pentalogy: cfr A. BAUSANI, Letteratura neo-
persiana, in A. PAGLIARO - A. BAUSANI, Storia della letteratura persiana, Milan, 1960,
p. 645 ff.
26
See Theophyl. Sim., Hist. 5,1,7-9 and 5,13,1ff.; Evagrius, Hist. eccl. 6,21 (ed.
J. BIDEZ - L. PARMENTIER, London, 1898, p. 235,11ff.); M.J. HIGGINS, Chosroes II's vo-
tive offerings at Sergiopolis, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 48 (1955), p. 89-102; LABOURT,
Le christianisme, p. 209; A. CHRISTENSEN, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, Copenhague,
19442, p. 487-489.
27
Cfr BROCK, Syriac Perspective, VI, p. 17-18; HENNING, Mitteliranisch, p. 77.
28
For example, in the Denkart (p. 428, 15 ff. and p. 412, 17 ff. ed. Madan) we
read that, at the time of Sahpuhr I, many Greek and Indian scientific texts were collected
and added to the Avesta. On Greek texts translated into Syriac from Pahlavi, cfr NAL-
LINO, Tracce di opere greche; W.H. BAILEY, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century
Books, Oxford, 1943, p. 158; A. PAGLIARO, Letteratura della Persia preislamica, in
A. PAGLIARO - A. BAUSANI, Storia della letteratura persiana, Milan, 1960, p. 89-90;
J.-F. DUNEAU, Quelques aspects de la pntration de l'hellnisme dans l'empire perse
sassanide (IV e-VII e sicle), in P. GALLAIS - Y.-J. RIOU (eds.), Mlanges offerts Ren
Crozet, Poitiers, 1966, vol. I, p. 13-22; M. ULLMANN, Die Medizin in Islam (Handbuch
der Orientalistik, Ergnzungsband VI, 1), Leiden, 1970, p. 103-107.
29
Cfr Agathias, II 28, 1 on the translations of Greek works into Middle Persian that
were commissioned by Chosroes I; cfr also D. GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture,
London-New York, 1998, p. 25.
30
Artaxerxes I, Sahpuhr I and Chosroes I are the three Sasanian sovereigns who had
scientific Greek and Indian works translated into Persian, according to the Kitab al-
Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim (238 f.); cfr NALLINO, Tracce di opere greche, p. 362-363.
138 C.A. CIANCAGLINI
scribes39; the second is in the region of alana, in the north of Iraq and,
before being taken over by the Kurds, this city had an important Chris-
tian monastery, where several scribes worked, the most illustrious being
Yusif, who was active between 1682 and 1716, and is probably to be
identified with the person who commissioned the text and is mentioned
in the colophon40. Part of the history of the Syriac Pseudo-Callisthenes
takes us back to northern Iraq, where we know that, at least before
around 1500, the predominant language of culture was Persian. The
Oriental Christians in this region addressed a public that was educated in
Persian, not in Arabic: it is therefore highly likely that quite a large
number of Persian elements, especially the glosses, entered the text long
after the time of the first translation from the Greek.
39
On the school of Alqos cfr MACUCH, Geschichte, p. 48-49.
40
Cfr J.M. FIEY, Assyrie chrtienne. Contribution l'tude de l'histoire et de la
gographie ecclsiastiques et monastiques du nord de l'Iraq, vol. I, Beyrouth, 1965,
p. 315-317; I wish to thank Prof. R. Contini and Prof. F. Pennacchietti for this informa-
tion.