Ferdowsi and Nezami in the Alexander Tradition: A Walk Through “The Making of a Myth”
Dina Famin
Students Dina Famin, Andrea Guttormsen Wetzler, and Emily Yoder in The British Library’s “Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth” exhibit.
“Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth” is a temporary exhibition at the British Library. According to Ursula Sims-Williams, one of the exhibit’s curators, the exhibit’s six color-coded rooms are meant to model the passing of a day from dawn to night, from the birth of the Alexander legend to the death of Alexander himself. The theme is evident on the curators’ narrative goal, but is interesting in practice, for Professor Roberta Micallef stated that she believed the colors corresponded to climate, from land to sea, and represent the physical journey rather than a life cycle, an opinion that I share. Each room also corresponds to a facet of the Alexander legend, and they are titled in order: “The Man and the Legend,” “A Conqueror in the Making,” “Building an Empire,” “Alexander’s Relationships,” “Mythical Quest,” and “Journey’s End.” The “Mythical Quest” section includes an additional interactive exhibit, a Tree of Life which predicts the fortune of the museum visitor standing in front of the projected screen. When it was my turn, I received the fortune: “Pride comes before a fall, so think carefully about how you approach things.” Despite Ursula’s explanation that they as curators avoided threatening fortunes such as “you will die,” mine still seemed a little ominous!
Ursula also explained that the exhibit was constructed to be widely accessible: although we were on a more scholarly trip, we also saw elementary-age school groups, as well as casual visitors of all ages. The Alexander Legend does not seem to be common knowledge, so I would imagine that the goal was not just a representation of the legend itself, but exposure to its existence. Thus, the exhibit also featured modern depictions of Alexander in literature, film, and pop culture, to connect the legend to the source. The variety of visitors necessitated everyone to have a different means of interacting with the material: the schoolchildren were guided through elements of the story to identify plot structure and progression, and were encouraged to create their own to demonstrate their knowledge. On the other hand, members of our group primarily looked at manuscript format, picture details, and gushed over the Amir Khusraw illustration which adorns the cover of the Penguin edition of the Greek Alexander Romance. As we went through the museum, I was thinking about the ways in which it was a learning/exposure tool, combining a more familiar historical basis in the beginning of the exhibit with perhaps surprising manuscripts showing the diversity of the legend and its elements, such as the changing of Alexander’s parentage and the mirabilia aspects. Finally, because of my background from XL 343, the choice of Persian manuscripts and elements in the exhibit was interesting, specifically the portrait of Alexander which they painted in the tradition.
The exhibit is structured around the Greek Alexander Romance, with quotes from the text (as well as from some historical documents) printed on the walls as the visitor walks through. The first room, “The Man and the Legend,” presents Alexander’s path and the formation of his legacy, including Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, a Babylonian tablet, the copy of an Egyptian student crafting a possible speech Alexander could have written, and an early copy of the Greek Romance. One section describes the different faces Alexander has taken on as he has been adapted to different cultures, and features a “A Medieval Alexander” symbolized by a 15th century Scottish text which illustrates him with boar-like fangs, “A Christian Alexander” in an 18th century Ge’ez scroll, and “A Philosophical Alexander” shown in a copy of Nezami’s Iskandarnamah. The manuscript, illustrated by Bihzad and dated to 1494-1495 in Afghanistan, illustrates Alexander “surrounded by seven sages – including Aristotle, Socrates and Plato” as he “questions the origin of the universe” (Alexander the Great Large Print Guide 11). The guide explains, “Alexander’s features in the painting deliberately resemble those of the artist’s patron, Sultan Husayn Bayqara of Herat, portraying him as a second Alexander” (Guide 11). In this exhibition room, the Persian Alexander is presented alongside the Alexanders of other traditions to illustrate his wide reach and adaptability, as well as the trend of ruling states adopting Alexander as source of legitimacy of power. The second room, “A Conqueror in the Making,” shifts from a description of the early writing of Alexander’s legend and its use to the past given him in the romance. The room devotes an exhibit each to his mother Olympias and his horse Bucephalus. In this room, we first see Alexander adapted to the Persian tradition as Darab’s son, but it is not the Shahnamah which illustrates the fact, but a Mughal copy of the 12th century Darabnamah (Abu Tahir Muhammad Tarsusi, 1580-1585).
It is in the third room, “Building an Empire,” where we first see the Shahnameh. Five copies of it, to be exact. They illustrate, in order, Alexander comforting the dying Darius (Isfahan?, Iran, 1604), the death of Darius (Bombay, 1849), Alexander battling Porus (India, about 1616), Alexander meeting the Brahmans (Rajaur, Northern India, 1719), and Alexander’s visit to the Kaaba (Shiraz, Iran, late 16th century). The first three manuscripts illustrate Alexander both as a conqueror and a man of peace, for as he comforts Darius, he takes upon himself Persian kingship in a rightful way. The first two manuscripts, Alexander and Darius, are exhibited together, and the latter is drawn in a style similar to the illustrations in Dick Davis’s Shahnameh. In the other two Shahnameh manuscripts on display in this room, Alexander is an emperor, stretching beyond Greece and Persia, now prioritizing learning and religion. Thus, the first part of the room illustrates his ascent to power, while the second illustrates his deeds afterward, specifically the transition into the “philosophical” Alexander introduced to us in the first room. In this room we see six copies of Nezami (score: Nezami seven, Ferdowsi five). Although Nezami’s text illustrates Alexander primarily as philosopher king, the chosen illustrations speak more to his expansion, which is interesting because the Shahnameh manuscripts almost equally show him as conqueror and intellectual.[1] Other elements in this room illustrate Alexander’s adaptation into the military legacy of European countries (for example, the comparison between Alexander and Prince Dmitry in a 17th century Russian manuscript, or the invocation of Alexander’s strength in Prince Henry Frederick’s 1607 armor).
Next, we shift from war to love, and enter a pink room labeled “Alexander’s Romances,” which illustrate both the heterosexual and homosexual tradition found in the Alexander legend. It is not Nezami’s romance which triumphs in this room, but Ferdowsi. Alexander’s promiscuity is on show with three copies of the Shahnameh illustrating his visit to Harum, the city of women, (Tabriz?, Iran, 1536), his wedding to Rawshanak (Qazvin, Iran, about 1590–95), and his marriage to an Indian princess (Sultanate India, 1438). By contrast, the chosen Iskandarnamah piece is Alexander’s visit to Nushabah (artist Mirza ‘Ali, Tabriz, Iran, mid-16th century) (score: Nezami eight, Ferdowsi eight). The Anonymous Prose Romance was brought up in this room, for there Alexander is most promiscuous—both we and Ursula brought up the 40 virgins in one night episode—but the exhibit itself did not. The focus of the room, instead, is the tension between two realities: Alexander’s hetero- and homosexual legacies. Last year when I mentioned to classmates that I was taking XL 343, many responded with some variation of Alexander being a markedly queer character, a dominant impression of him, so the exhibit challenged that notion by presenting images of Alexander both outside of the western sphere, and outside of our modern interpretation. I wondered, and still do, how the medieval Alexander tradition seems to the average viewer, for it is that tradition which dominates the exhibit, despite the first object on show being “A Classical Alexander,” a 2nd-1st century B.C marble bust. In this way, the exhibit engages with both familiar and unfamiliar aspects of the story.
The next room is perhaps even more strange, for it presents another genre present in the romances, wonder literature. The dark blue room, titled “Mythical Quest,” begins with a wall-sized image of the Ebstorf Map (Ebstorf, Northern Germany, around 1300), destroyed during the Second World War. This room is dark, one wall showing hardly illuminated manuscripts through round windows to simulate miracle and distance. While this sets the mood of the showing, it made making out details difficult! This was the room in which curatorial tricks seemed most prominent. First, there is the mood lighting, the darkness, the unusual presentation of objects (the second wall, still with dim lighting, showed manuscripts laid out similarly to other rooms, without the window pretense), and finally, the Tree of Life, an interactive part of the exhibit which connects the viewer to the motif of fate throughout the romance. A variety of sources illustrates the breadth of Alexander’s travels, including Thomas de Kent’s Roman de Toute Chevalerie, the Coptic Alexander Romance, a Russian lubok woodprint, and romances from Amir Khusraw and Jami, as well as the Tales of the Prophets and the Wonders of Creation. There are also manuscripts of Ferdowsi’s and Nezami’s work in the room (score: Nezami ten, Ferdowsi eleven), illustrating both Alexander’s exploits and the wonders he saw. The Shahnameh manuscripts depict Kay Kavus’s flying machine (Iran, 1486) to demonstrate the transplantation of a motif, Alexander killing a dragon (Isfahan, Iran, 1614), and a talking dragon (Shiraz, Iran, about 1420-1425). These show less the wonders themselves than Alexander’s reaction to them: the focus is on his character and heroism, as is expected from a fictive chronicle with the purpose of illustrating Alexander as king. As in the previous rooms, where the Shahnameh was used to illustrate Alexander as king, now we see him as a traveling hero, and the presence of the dragon may serve to introduce a familiar creature to the audience. The Iskandarnamah illustrates more the breadth of life which Alexander encountered; the illustrations depict sirens (Iran, 1410-1411) and the water of life (artist Talib Lala, Shiraz, Iran, 1665). The breadth of elements and traditions in this exhibit was striking, and they were not as localized as in the “Building an Empire” room, which indicates a shift from explaining or showing the spread of the romance to engaging its major themes.
“Journey’s End” begins with a manuscript room showing versions of Alexander’s final days, and ends with a secondary room containing a replica of Nectanebo II’s sarcophagus and an 18th century Venetian painting, “Saint Sisoes at Alexander’s Tomb.” These highlight the ambiguity of Alexander’s death and the fact that his final resting place is unknown. The Ferdowsi manuscripts in this section cover the entirety of Alexander’s final moments: first, the prophecy of his death (Iran or Iraq, around 1300), then the death itself (Qazvin, Iran, 1585-1586), and finally, an image of his coffin being carried (Isfahan, Iran, 1640). Nezami’s Iskandarnamah is not present in this section (final score: Nezami ten, Ferdowsi fourteen). The mood of death (or night, as the star-covered room evokes) is not solemn, as such, but it feels calmer than the previous section, which plays with mystery and suspense as chief emotions. Having gotten to know Alexander, and even having stood in his shoes before the Tree of Life, we now bid him goodbye, and the final elements of the exhibit return again to the idea of legend and evaluation.
“The Making of a Myth” engages both eastern and western recensions of the Alexander Legend, and includes as its Persian elements many copies of Nizami’s Iskandarnamah and Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The two books, not shown in chronological order to demonstrate the travel of a legend through a specific cultural sphere over time, are put in conversation with the worldwide Alexander tradition. Although familiar with elements of the Alexander romance from XL 343, the exhibit exposed me to so much more. Less broadly represented elements, such as the Slavonic romances, raised questions which I hope to explore later in life, such as the 17th century Russian manuscript (with fantastic earless elephants) and the Albanian Alexander Romance which inserts Alexander into Romance of Florimont. At the same time as guiding me to think through the narrative of the exhibit, which combined thematic and regional unfolding of the tale, the exhibit cemented my interest in the Alexander tradition.
[1] The six Nezami pieces illustrate, in order, Alexander deciding to invade Persia (Bengal, 1531–1532), the Battle of Gaugamela (Herat, Afghanistan, about 1490), the execution of the men who betrayed Darius (India, 1460–1475), “Pleading for an Idol to be Spared” (artists Mukund and La‘l Lahore, 1593–1595), his battle with the Russians (India, 1460–1475), and his destruction of the fire temples (Iran, 16th century).