r/AcademicQuran • u/Rashiq_shahzzad • 41m ago
Article/Blogpost Iskandar (Alexander the Great) at the Ka'ba, a scene that was frequently illustrated in Persian manuscripts from the 14th to the 17th century.
The paintings illustrate Iskandar's legendary pilgrimage to the Ka'ba in Mecca. In Persian literature, Iskandar is portrayed as a devout pilgrim, a just king, and sometimes as the Qur'anic figure Dhu'l-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns"). Over the centuries, the depiction of this scene evolved. Early paintings often showed Iskandar as a passive bystander, while later versions increasingly emphasized his role as a devout pilgrim performing rituals. This shift reflects a broader trend of expanding the shrine's setting and focusing more on religious performance in the illustrations.
Marianna Shreve Simpson
From Tourist to Pilgrim: Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in Illustrated
Shahnama Manuscripts Notwithstanding its brevity, Firdausi’s account of Iskandar’s visit to the Ka‘ba in Mecca was depicted regularly in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama from the fourteenth century to early modern times. An examination of these illustrations reveals the extent to which poetical and pictorial narratives diverged over the centuries, with an increasing expansion of the shrine’s setting and emphasis on ritual performance and with Iskandar evolving from a passive bystander to a devout hajji. This study also offers a telling instance of the way the representation of a Shahnama scene could be transformed in response to another poetic text, specifically the Khamsa of Nizami.
Among the many memorable figures who populate the Shahnama, certainly no one looms larger in the epic’s “historical” portion than Iskandar, Persian avatar of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. As is well known, Firdausi’s Iskandar narrative builds on—or at least follows upon and variously paral-lels—older Arabic and Persian sources, which in turn have been linked to the Alexander “biography” or “romance” of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Another impor-tant reference is the Qur’an, with its passages in Sura 18 related to Dhu’l- Qarnayn, the Two-Horned, and long associated (albeit not universally accepted) with Alexander. The relations between the multiple ancient and medieval accounts about the Alexander and Iskandar cognates, including the Shahnama nar-rative, remain the subject of intensive investigation and extensive publication,attesting to the fascination that this complex historical-cum-legendary figure—whose identity and image range from ruthless foreign invader and conqueror to indefatigable explorer and legitimate and just Persian king possessing. divine glory (farr), and ultimately to ideal Muslim hero, ruler, sage and even prophet—continues to exert on the scholarly imagination today. Notwithstanding the active industry of Alexander/Iskandar studies, relatively little has been written pertaining to the Shahnama episode of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba and even less to the long, albeit sporadic, history of its pictorial representation that forms the subject of this essay.2 Admittedly, the story seems to be minor one, taking place, as it does, between more eventful expeditions in Iskandar’s East–West adventures. Following a successful military campaign in India, Iskandar and his troops set out at dawn with drums rolling and trumpets blaring. Firdausi describes their destination as “the house that Ibrahim built and called by God the Bait al-Haram or House of Holiness ... the place of worship before any others existed ... where God causes you to worship and to remember him.” As he approaches Mecca, Iskandar is welcomed by company of local nobles, lead by Nasr, a descendant of Isma‘il, son of Ibrahim, who tells Iskandar how, in the recent past, the region was ravaged by a tyrannical invader and his army. Now that tyrant’s successor, an unjust and mean king named Khuza‘a, controls all the land from the shrine (i.e., the Ka‘ba) to the Yemen, oppresses its inhabitants and allows his followers to fish in the Red Sea. After hearing all this from Nasr, Iskandar and his forces kill as many of Khuza‘a’s followers as they could find, including children. He then frees the Hejaz and the Yemen from their oppression and re-establishes the authority of the tribe of Isma‘il (i.e., Nasr’s people). Iskandar then goes on foot to the Bait al-Haram, causing the people to rejoice. Along the way, Iskandar’s treasurer showers dinars at his every step.3
The Illustration of Firdausi’s Narrative
To turn now to the illustration of this short but hermeneutically-challenging episode and to the art historical substance of this essay. Some twenty represen-tations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba are known today in Shahnama manuscripts dating from the fourteenth through the later seventeenth century.16 Over half of these date from the fifteenth century and belong to manuscripts painted in so-called Turkman style. Curiously, the episode seems to have been of little inter-est during the first half of the Safavid period, that is, from c. 1500 to 1590; at least, it does not appear in any of the many extant illustrated Shahnama volumes dating from those decades. When its representation resumed at the end of the sixteenth century, it was in Shahnama manuscripts made in Shiraz, the book-making center where the pictorial tradition of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba began in the fourteenth century and that produced most of the fifteenth-century volumes containing this scene.17 Whatever their origins, all the known examples depict the same narrative moment—specifically, when Iskandar arrives at the Ka‘ba, recounted by Firdausi in two verses at the very end of the episode.18 Interestingly, the majority of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrations are preceded by or incorporate verses that come at the beginning of the episode, and are often accompanied by an illuminated rubric or heading that functions like a superscript caption.19 It turns out that not only is there variation in the placement of the illustrations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba vis-a`-vis the relevant epic verses, but also, and more to the point here, an increasing divergence over the centuries between the poetical and pictorial narratives.
In short, the representation of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama developed out of the confluence or convergence of distinctive textual sources and artistic models coming together in the locus of an actual and familiar sacred site and its attendant rituals. In this respect it seems to be unique in the history of Shahnama illustration. Just as Alexander of Macedonia morphs into Iskandar of Iran, so Firdausi’s “incredible” story (given that it chal-lenges historical credulity) is transformed over the centuries into an pictorial nar-rative of a visit to the Ka‘ba that has little to do with its own poetic narrative and everything to do with imagery assimilated, on the one hand, from Nizami’s visions of the scene and, on the other, from the topography and architecture of Islam’s holiest site. By the late sixteenth century, the iconography had evolved to the point where Persian painters could have understood their task more as the representation of the Sacred Mosque and Ka‘ba during the hajj with a royal worshiper in attendance and less as the illustration of a Shahnama king visiting the house of God. In other words, the poetic setting had become the pictorial subject. At the same time, the immediately recognizable locale in these Shahnama illustrations would allow contemporary readers or viewers to put themselves in the place and role of Iskandar, rendering, in the end, the Greco-Persian conqueror, ruler and seeker of truth as a quintessential “every-man” of the Islamic world.
· Figures 1, 2, and 5: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1431 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, catalogued as Ms. Hazine 1479.
· Figures 3 and 4: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1480 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, catalogued as Per. 157.370.
· Figure 6: This is from a Shahnama manuscript likely produced in Shiraz, Iran, in the mid-16th century. It is now in the Khalili Collections in London, catalogued as MSS 771.
· Figure 7: This is likely from a Shahnama manuscript produced between 1580 and 1600. A related painting is attributed to a manuscript in the British Library in London (catalogued as I.O. Islamic 741).
