This study aims to explore how the Alexander Romance entered the Persian literary tradition and to understand precisely its influence. The main question addressed is whether the Alexander Romance was part of the pre-Islamic Persian tradition and, if so, what its key characteristics were. Because of the dearth of pre-Islamic Persian sources, this thesis is necessarily mostly based on early Arabic and Persian sources written in the early Islamic period, some of which were derived from pre-Islamic traditions. Aside from the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī, the Arabic histories (Ṭabarī, Dinawarī, the anonymous Nihāyat al-‘arab, the Ghurar al-Sayr of Thaʻālibī) included Alexander in their chapters on the Kayānid kings, presenting him as the half-brother of Dārā (Darius III). My examination of these histories largely focuses on their understanding of the Persian descent of Alexander, which is derived from the Sasanian Khudāynāmag. Most scholars have looked askance at the presence of a positive perspective on Alexander in the Persian world because the Zoroastrian tradition usually presented him as a cursed figure and one of Persia’s worst enemies. Perhaps one of the original contributions of this thesis will thus be its demonstration of the existence of a very positive view of Alexander in the classical Arabic and Persian sources that is not just the result of biases derived from the Islamic era, but which also reflects the viewpoint of numerous pre-Islamic Persian sources on Alexander. Current research in the field also focuses on the influence of the Alexander Romance on Persian epics, romances and storytelling. In this respect, I have focused mainly on the two key literary genres: the popular romances, mainly in prose, and the epics, mainly in verse. Of great interest to this study are the Dārābnāma of Ṭarsūsī (twelfth century), the epic of the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī (tenth–eleventh century), besides the Iskandarnāma of Niẓāmī (twelfth century). These works all preserve stories about Alexander the Great from the pre-Islamic Persian tradition.

acase@tulane.edu

Cette thèse traite de la question de la traduction arabe du Roman d’Alexandre du Pseudo-Callisthène. Le passage du grec à l’arabe est décrit à travers l’examen philologique des différentes recensions grecques (α, β (L, λ), ε, γ) ainsi que de nombreuses sources arabes. Le Roman d’Alexandre présente un cas spécifique dans le domaine des Graeco-Arabica. A côté de la transmission écrite, que ce soit sous forme d’une traduction ou d’une réélaboration thématique, un rôle particulier doit être accordé à la transmission orale basée sur la Sourate de la Caverne du Coran. Non seulement une recension grecque du Roman d’Alexandre s’est manifestée dans les sources arabes, mais plusieurs (α, β, ε, γ), parmi lesquelles la recension β occupe une place importante dans l’Orient. Le but consiste à présenter un aperçu des chapitres du Roman qui ont fait l’objet d’une réception orientale afin de fournir une contribution à la survie de l’antiquité grecque dans l’Islam. / This thesis deals with the issue of the Arabic translation of the Greek Alexander Romance by Pseudo-Callisthenes. By a philological study of the various Greek recensions (α, β (L, λ), ε, γ) as well as numerous Arabic sources it will be shown how the Alexander Romance, as a special example of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement, was rendered into Arabic. Apart from the written tradition, either in the form of a translation from the Greek or a paraphrase, the oral tradition based on Surah 18 of the Quran plays a central role. The influence of not just one but several recensions (α, β, ε, γ) of the Greek Alexander Romance can be traced in various Arabic sources. Especially the Byzantine β-recension must have played an important part in the East. The aim of the dissertation is to give a detailed overview of those chapters of the Alexander Romance which have been received in the Orient in order to illustrate how ancient Greek literature made its way into the Islamic world.