Alexander the Great in Eastern Sources. From Middle East to China

Abstract

The review of the sources discussed in this research has the purpose of illustrating the path from West to East that was traced by the transmission of Alexander the Great's fame in different cultural and geographical areas. In the narrative panorama examined, it was possible to perceive the reverberation and impact that the figure of the sovereign exerted on the eastern populations, even on those who were not directly involved in his military conquests.

Within the range of the different temporal and geographical contexts investigated - Middle East, Mongolia and China - several aspects and points of contact emerge within the representations of the different narrative and iconographic traditions inspired by this historical figure - invested with a mythical aura - who was presented according to stylistic canons that fit perfectly into the cultural substratum and the different local models in which it was spread.

These are mainly Middle Eastern and Eastern sources that provide an interesting mirror perspective from the point of view of the study of history and that represent what can be described as an interesting counterpart to Greco-Roman sources. These traces reconstruct and permit the acknowledgement of a reality where history and narrative tradition collide in a peculiar perspective and, moreover, they provide an opportunity to examine the legacy of the historical figure of Alexander in aeras that were relatively neutral politically and also in very dissimilar cultural contexts.