The story of Dhu al-Qarnayn is mentioned in Surah al-Kahf of the Quran. It has long been recognised in modern scholarship that the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn has strong similarities with the Syriac Legend of Alexander the Great. According to this legend, Alexander travelled to the ends of the world then built a wall in the Caucasus mountains to keep Gog and Magog out of civilized lands.
Dhu al-Qarnayn, appears in the Qur'an, Surah al-Kahf (18), Ayahs 83–101, as one who travels to the east and west and sets up a barrier between a certain people and Gog and Magog. Elsewhere, the Qur'an tells how the end of the world will be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the barrier. Other apocalyptic writings predict that their destruction by God in a single night will usher in the Day of Resurrection.
The Alexander Romance, once described as "antiquity's most successful novel", is an account of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great. The Romance describes Alexander the Great from his birth, to his succession of the throne of Macedon, his conquests including that of the Persian Empire, and finally his death. Although constructed around an historical core, the romance is mostly fantastical, including many miraculous tales and encounters with mythical creatures such as sirens or centaurs. In this context, the term Romance refers not to the meaning of the word in modern times but in the Old French sense of a novel or roman, a "lengthy prose narrative of a complex and fictional character".
Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai is perhaps the earliest work in Malay on the first Malay-Muslim kingdom of Samudera-Pasai. In the story, Merah Silu met Muhammad in his dream and accepted conversion to Islam. The book is believed to have been composed around the late 14th or more likely early 15th century. The text of this work has a lot of parallels with the Sejarah Melayu and the history of Melaka.
Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain is a Malay epic in the tradition of the Alexander Romance describing fictional exploits of Alexander the Great (Iskandar), identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn (Zulkarnain), a king briefly mentioned in the Quran. The oldest existing manuscript is dated 1713, but is in a poor state. Another manuscript was copied by Muhammad Cing Sa'idullah about 1830.
The vast conquests of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great quickly inspired the formation and diffusion of legendary material about his deity, journeys, and tales. These appeared shortly after his death, and some may have already begun forming during his lifetime. Common themes and symbols, among legends about Alexander include the Gates of Alexander, the Horns of Alexander, and the Gordian Knot.
Malaysian literature consists of literature produced in the Malay Peninsula until 1963 and in Malaysia thereafter. Malaysian literature is typically written in any of the country's four main languages: Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. It portrays various aspects of Malaysian life and comprises an important part of the culture of Malaysia.
Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiah is a Malay literary work that recounts the story of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah, half-brother of the martyrs of Shiism, Hasan and Husayn. The story revolves around the aftermath of the battle of Karbala and Muhammad’s role in an uprising against Yazid I, the caliph of Umayyad Caliphate.
Hikaaitaan or Hikāyatān is a title given to the semi-legendary set of 11 tales, composed in the Gurmukhi/Persian vernacular, whose authorship is traditionally attributed to Guru Gobind Singh. It is the last composition of the second scripture of Sikhs, Dasam Granth, and some believe it to be appended to Zafarnamah—the letter to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Shihāb ad-Dīn Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Maḥallī ; aka Jalaluddin was an Egyptian renowned mufassir and a leading specialist in the principles of the law in Shafi'i jurisprudence. He authored numerous and lengthy works on various branches of Islamic Studies, among which the most important two are Tafsir al-Jalalayn and Kanz al-Raghibin, an explanation of Al-Nawawi's Minhaj al-Talibin, a classical manual on Islamic Law according to Shafi'i fiqh.
Malaysian folklore is the folk culture of Malaysia and other indigenous people of the Malay Archipelago as expressed in its oral traditions, written manuscripts and local wisdoms. Malaysian folklores were traditionally transmitted orally in the absence of writing systems. Oral tradition thrived among the Malays, but continues to survive among Orang Asli and numerous Bornean ethnic groups in Sarawak and Sabah. Nevertheless, Malaysian folklores are closely connected with classical Malay folklore of the region. Even though, Malay folklore tends to have a regional background, with the passing of time, and through the influence of the modern media, large parts of regional Malay folklore have become interwoven with the wider popular Malaysian folklore.
The Sīrat al-Iskandar is a 13th-century Arabic popular romance about Alexander the Great. It belongs to the sīra shaʿbiyya genre and was composed by Mufarrij al-Ṣūrī in the 15th century.
The Hikayat Aceh is a 17th-century history of the Aceh Sultanate, which is located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Written in Malay in the Arabic script it chronicles and eulogizes the Acehnese Sultan Iskandar Muda. The Hikayat Aceh is an indispensable tool for all interested in the history of Aceh and its exceptional political, cultural, and religious traits.
The Horns of Alexander represent an artistic tradition that depicted Alexander the Great with two horns on his head, a form of expression that was associated originally as the Horns of Ammon. Alexander's horns came with connotations of political and/or religious legitimacy, including indications of his status as a god, and these representations of Alexander under his successors carried implications of their divine lineage or succession from his reign. Mediums of expression of the horns of Alexander included coinage, sculpture, medallions, textiles, and literary texts, such as in the tradition of the Alexander Romance literature. Rarely was anyone other than Alexander depicted with the two horns as this was considered unique to his imagery.
Alexander the Great was a king of ancient Greece and Macedon who forged one of the largest empires in world history. Soon after his death, a body of legend began to accumulate about his life and exploits. With the Greek Alexander Romance and its translation into numerous languages including Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, and more, an entire genre of literature was dedicated to the exploits of Alexander in both Christian and Muslim realms. Alexander was also the one most frequently identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn, a figure that appears in Surah Al-Kahf in the Quran, the holy text of Islam, which greatly expanded the attention paid to him in the traditions of the Muslim world.
The Qiṣṣat Dhī ʾl-Qarnayn is a Hispano-Arabic legend of Alexander the Great preserved in two fourteenth-century manuscripts in Madrid and likely dates as a ninth-century Arabic translation of the Syriac Alexander Legend produced in Al-Andalus. In this respect, it is similar to the Hadīth Dhī ʾl-Qarnayn and is an example of the literary genre of Qisas al-Anbiya. It is to be distinguished from another text also known as the Qissat Dhulqarnayn found in the book of prophets by al-Tha'labi as well as the Qiṣṣat al-Iskandar, a text dating to the late eighth or early ninth century representing the earliest translation of the Alexander Romance into Arabic. The Qissat depicts the travels of Alexander whom it identifies with the figure named Dhu al-Qarnayn in Surah al-Kahf of the Quran, referred to as Dhulqarnayn in the text. The Qissat depicts Alexander (Dhulqarnayn) as a faithful believer and as a proto-Muslim who spreads monotheism through his conquests. It combines elements of pre-Islamic Alexander legends in addition to novel traditions developed in the oral Arab-Islamic tradition. Using the Islamic citation method of isnad, the text prefaces each narrative episode with a chain of transmitters that root in one of Muhammad's companions. Its primary transmitters are given as Ka'b al-Ahbar, Ibn 'Abbas, Muqatil ibn Sulayman, 'Abd al-Malik al-Mashuni, and 'Abd al-Malik b. Zayd. An English translation of the Qissat Dhulqarnayn was first produced by David Zuwiyya in 2001.
The Qiṣṣat al-Iskandar is the earliest narrative of Alexander the Great in the tradition of the Alexander Romance genre in the Arabic language. It was composed by ‘Umara ibn Zayd (767-815) between the late 8th to the early 9th century as a recension on the Syriac Alexander Legend. It is not to be confused with the Qissat Dhulqarnayn or the Sirat al-Iskandar.
The Hadīth Dhī ʾl-Qarnayn, also known as the Leyenda de Alejandro, is an anonymous Hispano-Arabic legend of Alexander the Great. It dates to the 15th century.
Alexander the Great was the king of the Kingdom of Macedon and the founder of an empire that stretched from Greece to northwestern India. Legends surrounding his life quickly sprung up soon after his own death. His predecessors represented him in their coinage as the son of Zeus Ammon, wearing what would become the Horns of Alexander as originally signified by the Horns of Ammon. Legends of Alexander's exploits coalesced into the third-century Alexander Romance which, in the premodern period, went through over one hundred recensions, translations, and derivations and was translated into almost every European vernacular and every language of the Islamic world. After the Bible, it was the most popular form of European literature. It was also translated into every language from the Islamicized regions of Asia and Africa, from Mali to Malaysia.
