Middle Eastern Literatures

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On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’

Dimitri Gutas

To cite this article: Dimitri Gutas (2009) On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’, Middle Eastern
Literatures, 12:1, 59-70, DOI: 10.1080/14752620902760590

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Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2009

REVIEW ARTICLE

On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’

DIMITRI GUTAS

The Correspondence between Aristotle and Alexander the Great. An Anonymous

Greek Novel in Letters in Arabic Translation, Documenta et Monographiae V
MIKLÓS MARÓTH
Piliscsaba, The Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2006, i–viþ112 pp.
(English text); i–v, 149 pp. (Arabic text).

It is fortunate that the study of late antiquity has picked up speed in recent times.
Numerous studies on various aspects of it have shown us how interrelated and multi-
cultural the world of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East was, how complex the
structures of societies at all levels were, and how necessary it is, in order to understand the
period properly, to engage constructively in interdisciplinary research. The ivory walls of
Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Middle Iranian studies in independence from each other must
come down if we are to proceed, for the complexity is manifested in all cultural products of
the age, and in particular in the literary remains, a supreme and very representative
example of which is provided by an Arabic series of apocryphal letters exchanged among
Philip of Macedon, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great. The letters, which are pre-
ponderantly on the subject of ruling treated with philosophical overtones, contain a
substantial amount of gnomic material and are loosely woven together by a very flimsy
narrative line that lends a chronological development to the sequence.
This epistolary cycle, as I will call it descriptively (for the literary genre to which it belongs
is very much in question), came piecemeal to the attention of scholarship. One part of it that
exists independently in the manuscript tradition was noticed already in the 19th century by
Julius Lippert and published in 1891.1 Less than two decades later that same document was
published, together with another, smaller part containing sententious wisdom, by the
Lebanese Jesuit, Louis Cheikho, in the journal Al-Machriq. Subsequently Richard Walzer
came across one of the main Istanbul manuscripts that contain the entire cycle, and
announced it in 1934. But it was the 1960s that saw a veritable frenzy of activity on the text.
Independently of each other, three scholars—Józef Bielawski, Mario Grignaschi, and
Samuel Stern—worked on and edited different parts of the cycle and wrote lengthy and
detailed analyses of its contents. The cycle in its entirety, however, was neither published
nor translated. The longest letter in the cycle (45% of all text), on government in general
(as-Siy ammiyya), parts of which served as the predecessor of what was later to
asa al-‘

Dimitri Gutas, Near Eastern Languages, Yale University, Box 208236, New Haven, CT 06520-8236,
USA. E-mail:dimitri.gutas@yale.edu

ISSN 1475-262X print/ISSN 1475-2638 online/09/010059-12 Ó 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14752620902760590
60 D. Gutas

become the famous and very popular Secretum secretorum (Sirr al-asr ar), was the subject of a
very detailed analysis of its origins and sources by Manzalaoui and of an edition and study
by Grignaschi.2 The offshoot document, Sirr al-asr ar, has continued to attract scholarly
attention until the present: the Iranian background of the text was highlighted in a
fundamental article by van Bladel, who also referred to the pioneering studies of Shaked,3
the Latin tradition was studied comprehensively by Williams,4 and the Arabic text was
analyzed in detail by Forster;5 the epistolary cycle itself, however, has been neglected. With
the present publication of the text of the entire cycle for the first time by Maróth, the way has
now been paved for renewed efforts that will elucidate and properly evaluate this fascinating
and perplexing text.
The contents of the entire cycle and the history of its development and manuscript
transmission have been variously described by the scholars who worked on it in the
1960s, and now, although to a much lesser extent, by Maróth, but not fully or in the
detail they deserve. In addition, the expository style of most of these scholars tends to be
rather chaotic and repetitive when the utmost precision and concision are required in
dealing with this exceptionally complex text; and since there is no complete translation,
it is appropriate that I list here the different parts that comprise it together with their
publication status and secondary literature.6

‘The Epistolary Cycle between Aristotle and Alexander’

The cycle has no original title; this is mine, which is why I put it in quotation marks.
Maróth prints as the Arabic title Ahw al al-hukam a’ fı ayyam al-Iskandar, a rather
˙ ˙
inappropriate recasting by Maróth himself of the Arabic title in the MSS, which reads
Kit ab al-ahw al wa-l-ah b
ar al-Iskandariyya wa-ah bar hukam a’ zam
an Iskandar al-mazbur
˙   ˙
arıh . This is clearly the title devised by some scribe before the 11th century to
fı t-taw

describe the contents of the cycle (see below), and it throws an interesting light on how
the contents were perceived by educated people of that time.

x1. Narrative 1. Introduction. Philip of Macedon, childless, worries about

succession but is told by astrologers that an illustrious son would be born to
him. The boy, Alexander, is eventually born and when he reaches the age of
seven, Aristotle, then the leading philosopher in Athens, writes to Philip to urge
him to provide the boy a philosophical education. [p. 3]
x2. Letter 1. Letter by Aristotle to Philip in praise of the study of philosophy
and its appropriateness for Alexander. [pp. 3–6]7
x3. Letter 2. Philip’s letter to Aristotle charging him to visit Macedon and
dedicate himself to Alexander’s education. [pp. 7–8]
x4. Letter 3. Aristotle writes to Philip arguing that a philosophical education is
best acquired in Athens. [pp. 8–9]
x5. Narrative 2. Philip sends Alexander to Athens where he is received with due
honor by Aristotle. Then Aristotle composes a letter on ethics for Alexander.
x6. Letter 4. Aristotle’s letter to Alexander on ethics. [pp. 10–11]

ar 219–21.8 For
Cited independently among the sayings of Aristotle by Mubaššir, Muh t
9 
its Persian provenance see the comments by Grignaschi.

x7. Narrative 3. Alexander excels in his study of philosophy. Philip, ill and
moribund, summons Aristotle and Alexander. He rewards the former and
 On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’ 61

appoints the latter his successor. He asks Aristotle to pledge to look after the
new king’s welfare and comfort him. [p. 12]

x8. Gnomology 1. Aristotle’s admonitions (wasiyya) to Alexander in the

˙
presence of Philip. [pp. 12–19]

This collection of wise counsels was first edited separately by L. Cheikho.10 It is also
found embedded in Miskawayh’s Al-Hikma al-h a lida, and it is quoted selectively by
˙ 
Mubaššir.11 Grignaschi asserts their Persian provenance.12 Detailed study by Maróth
26–34 in support of a Greek origin in Christian times.

x9. Narrative 4. Philip, in his deathbed, is consoled by Aristotle who tells him
that he would have the fate of the pious and god-like in afterlife. Then Philip
dies and Alexander becomes king. He rules in the best possible way and makes
mighty conquests, never neglecting to consult and respect Aristotle and seek
his opinion. [p. 19]
x10. Letter 5. Letter by Aristotle to Alexander congratulating him upon his
conquest of Scythia. [pp. 20–22]
x11. Letter 6. Letter by Aristotle to Alexander congratulating him upon his
conquest of Anfısan.13 [pp. 23–24]
x12. Narrative 5. When Alexander sets out to conquer Persia, Aristotle writes
to him a letter which he calls ‘Governing in general’. It contains information
about what he needs to do when conquering Persians, Khurasanians,
Soghdians, Turks, Arabs, Negroes, and Indians. [p. 25]
x13. Letter 7. Aristotle’s letter to Alexander on ‘Governing in general’
(as-Siy ammiyya). [pp. 25–84]
asa al-‘

The longest letter of the cycle, parts of which formed the core document of what was
later to become The Secret of Secrets (Sirr al-asr
ar), was initially described by Bielawski,
and edited separately by Grignaschi,14 with commentary and study, supporting its
Persian origins. Study by Maróth, passim, in support of Greek origins. For the title itself
see Grignaschi, ‘La figure d’Alexandre chez les Arabes et sa genèse’, p. 225 and 230ff.
The text contains a Platonic sermon, H utbat Afl atun (pp. 40–42 of the ed.), which is also
 ˙ ˙
found independently in the gnomological tradition, as in Mubaššir’s Muh t ar.15


x14. Narrative 6. Coda of Narrative 5, leading to and introducing the next

letter. [p. 85]
x15. Letter 8. Letter by Alexander
[pp. 85–87]
x16. Letter 9. Letter by Aristotle in
Alexander for the conquest of Persia.
asking Aristotle about royal conduct.
response to the former, congratulating
[pp. 88–101]

The text with the longest publication history, this letter was edited separately first by
Lippert and then by Cheikho.16 A critical edition, with French translation and extensive
commentary, appeared in Bielawski and Plezia, while there had preceded studies by
Bielawski and Stern; see also, more recently, Grignaschi.17

x17. Narrative 7. After defeating Darius, Alexander considers executing the

Persian nobility, and writes to Aristotle asking his opinion. [p. 102]
62 D. Gutas

x18. Letter 10. Letter by Alexander posing the question about the execution of
the Persian nobility. [pp. 102–103]

Edited separately and translated into French by Grignaschi.18 Taken from the Middle
Persian Letter of Tansar.19

x19. Letter 11. Aristotle’s response dissuading Alexander from such a course of
action. [pp. 104–105]

Edited separately and translated into French by Grignaschi.20 For some Persian
elements in it see Grignaschi’s ‘La figure d’Alexandre’, 225n51. Taken from the Middle
Persian Letter of Tansar;21 Maróth (p. 8n20 and pp. 71–3) disputes this and argues that
the Letter of Tansar itself derives from the Greek correspondence.

x20. Narrative 8. Leaving Persia behind, Alexander reaches the steppe between
Kirman and Hurasan. He crosses it with a small army, defeats the Hurasanians
 
and rules their lands. Aristotle writes to congratulate him for the conquest of
Hurasan. [p. 106]

x21. Letter 12. Letter by Aristotle praising and congratulating Alexander for
the conquest of Hurasan. [pp. 106–107]

x22. Narrative 9. After invading India, Alexander comes across a palace
decked out in gold which he much admires. He writes to Aristotle to tell him
about this. In his response, Aristotle informs him that the philosophers seek
beauty in the order of the universe, a beauty which is far greater than that of the
golden palace which he admires. This is the letter describing the order of the
universe, known as ‘The Golden’, and also as ‘The Palace of Gold’. [p. 108]
x23. Letter 13. Aristotle’s ‘Golden Letter’ on the nature of the universe.
[pp. 108–130]

This is the Ps.-Aristotelian De Mundo, which has been introduced into this cycle of
letters through the conceit, expressed in Narrative 9, of Aristotle’s attempt to re-direct
Alexander’s admiration from artificial objects to the orderly arrangement of the cosmos.
It was translated into Syriac and, on its basis, three times into Arabic, as identified by
Stern (Bielawski, in his description of the text had failed to identify it).22 All three Arabic
versions were edited by Brafman,23 together with English translation and commentary.
There is a partial edition and French translation, with a detailed table of contents of the
passages not edited, in Grignaschi.24

x24. Letter 14. Letter by Aristotle to Alexander on intercession. [p. 131]

x25. Narrative 10. When Alexander falls ill and is on his deathbed, he writes to
his mother. She receives the letter and realizes that Alexander is consoling her
about his impending death. When he dies, people eulogize him. Selections
from the laments of philosophers. [p. 132]
x26. Gnomology 2. The laments of philosophers upon Alexander’s death.
[pp. 132–133]

Edited separately and translated into French by Grignaschi.25 This is a very popular
topos in Arabic wisdom literature, and there are numerous collections with such sayings,
 On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’ 63

apparently widely divergent from each other. No comprehensive study of the subject
exists other than an edition by Brock of a Syriac collection and its Arabic counterparts,
which also includes extensive literature on Alexander in Syriac and Arabic.26 Hunayn’s
˙
collection, among others, has a lengthy section of such sayings.27

x27. Colophon of the original manuscript. [p. 133]

x28. Appendices. There follow as appendices other pieces from the Alexander-
Aristotle file, which were added to the cycle by one of the scribes (‘Alı b.
Muhammad? see below), but which do not belong to it originally, such as
˙
Alexander’s letter of consolation to his mother (extant in a number of early
gnomological and epistolary sources), some passages about Aristotle’s
education and further sayings of philosophers taken apparently from Hunayn’s
˙
gnomology, and al-Hatimı’s collection of verses by al-Mutanabbi’ expressing
˙ 28
Aristotelian thoughts.

The two manuscripts which contain this cycle with these contents and this order are
found both in Istanbul, Fatih 5323 and Ayasofya 4260. They are dated 716/1316 and
714/1315, respectively,29 and they both contain the same colophon. On the basis of this
and other evidence, Grignaschi (‘Le roman épistolaire classique’, p. 218) concluded that
the two MSS are independent of each other but go back, through a number of unknown
intermediaries, to a common archetype. According to this colophon (text and translation
given by Grignaschi in ‘Le roman épistolaire classique’, pp. 215–17, and text only by
Maróth in x27, as listed above), the original copy, now lost, was made by a certain scribe/
secretary from Niffar (al-k atib an-Niffarı) called al-Muraǧǧa b. al-Mu’ammil, who gives
no date. Then this was copied by ‘Alı b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. al-Qadı al-Hamad anı,
˙ ˙ 
a scribe/secretary from Mayyafariqın (al-k ariqı) in 491/1097;30 ˙this copy also is
atib al-F
lost. The scribes of the Fatih and Ayasofya MSS do not give their names when they date
the copies we do have.
The text of the cycle, as we have it, thus goes back to a copy made before 491/1097 by
a certain scribe from Niffar in southern Iraq with the unusual name of al-Muraǧǧa b.
al-Mu’ammil, which may be yet another element of pseudonymity in this set of texts so
beset with this phenomenon.31 However that might be, and future research will have to
investigate it further, it would appear certain that the genesis of this cycle in Arabic—in
some form if not in this precise form in which al-Muraǧǧa has transmitted it—goes back
to Salim Ab u l-‘Ala’, the secretary of the Umayyad caliph Hišam b. ‘Abd al-Malik.
According to the Fihrist (117 Flügel), Salim translated, or had translated and he
corrected (aslaha), the letters of Aristotle to Alexander. Given that Salim and Salim’s
˙ ˙
protégé and in-law relative (h atan), ‘Abd al-Hamıd b. Yahya, developed an epistolary
 ˙ ˙
style and genre that included letters of advice and mirrors for princes, Ibn an-Nadım’s
report gains in credibility, and Grignaschi has done much in his articles to establish it.
Furthermore, if the scribes of the two source manuscripts mentioned in the colophon,
whose profession is stated with insistence in their titles (al-k atib an-Niffarı, al-k
atib al-
Fariqı), are chancellery secretaries, then the epistolary cycle would seem to have
circulated in the same circles as those in which it had originated with Salim Ab u l-‘Ala’,
namely the functionaries of the caliphal administration. Finally, if al-Muraǧǧa b.
al-Mu’ammil from Niffar is a real name and probably Christian (or at least if the father’s
is), this might point to somebody who lived in the second century of the ‘Abbasids, when
the Persian secretaries in the court in Baghdad were gradually replaced by Christian
64 D. Gutas

Arabs from Iraq.32 The transmission of the cycle in Arabic could thus be summarized as
follows: translation of the apocryphal correspondence between Aristotle and Alexander
into Arabic in Damascus around 730 through the good offices of Secretary Salim Ab u
l-‘Ala’; first identifiable copy of the cycle as we have it made around 900 in Baghdad by
Secretary al-Muraǧǧa b. al-Mu’ammil; copy of al-Muraǧǧa’s archetype copied by
Secretary ‘Alı b. Muhammad al-Hamad anı, also in Baghdad (?), in 1097; the two extant
˙ 
copies of ‘Alı b. Muhammad’s manuscript, made in 1315 and 1316 by two unknown
˙
scribes, now housed in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul.
If then it is taken as relatively certain that the epistolary cycle first made its appearance
in Arabic in the second quarter of the 8th century—the time when Salim was active—the
question next raises itself what its original form and language were. Both Grignaschi in
the 1960s and now Maróth agree that in essence the cycle was originally composed in
Greek some time in the 6th century.33 They differ, however, in most of the other details.
Grignaschi (‘La figure d’Alexandre’, pp. 227–29) sees the author as a Greek who wrote
to reclaim Greek descent for Alexander in refutation of the Ps.-Callisthenes version
where Alexander is depicted as the offspring of the adulterous relation between Olympias
and the Egyptian Nectanebo. Maróth (p. 97), on the other hand, considers the author to
be ‘a member of an oriental Christian church (a Maronite?) . . . more or less closely
attached to one of the Syrian schools of rhetoric’. More importantly, they differ on the
amount of material which they assigned to the original Greek core of the cycle.
Grignaschi considered only a part of the cycle as Greek,34 and claimed that the presence
in the letters of what, according to him, was Hermetic teachings and Sasanian Persian
ideas, together with details that point to the period after the Islamic conquests, made it
necessary to assume that the final version in Arabic was the result of a collaboration
between a Syriac Hermetist author, probably from Harran, and Salim Ab u l-‘Ala’ in the
˙
first half of the 8th century. Maróth, by contrast, argues in favour of an almost
completely Greek origin for the cycle, whose sources he claimed to have found in Greek
epistolography as allegedly practiced until late antique times in ‘schools of rhetoric.’ As a
result, he denies (pp. 58–94) both the Hermetic nature of the teachings referred to by
Grignaschi and the Persian origin of the other elements, and attributes instead whatever
features of the cycle were obviously not by the hand of the 6th century ‘oriental
Christian’ author or his earlier sources, to the agency of Salim himself (or his assistants).
The question is far from settled, for the material itself is extremely complex and not all
its parts have been taken equally into consideration, not all the possible sources have
been examined with equal care, and not all the problems raised by the nature and
purpose of the whole, in its various manifestations and at different periods, have been
addressed. To begin with one of the fundamental problems—that of the translation of
the cycle into Arabic from Greek. That some of the letters in the cycle—but how many of
them and how much of each?—are ultimately a Greek production is beyond doubt: there
are enough citations in ancient literature of the existence of an apocryphal
correspondence between Alexander and Aristotle, some few fragments, and more
extensive texts in papyri.35 There are also littered throughout the letters references to
Greek names, correctly spelled, but these names by themselves are not necessarily proof
of their Greek provenance if they cannot be identified in extant Greek works.36 The date
of composition of all these is in Hellenistic times, and of very few perhaps in the first two
Christian centuries; in any case, the youngest Greek fragment from and reference to this
correspondence that we have is from Aelian, in the beginning of the 3rd Christian
century.37 It is therefore astounding that there is nothing from later times and late
 On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’ 65

antiquity to indicate that the epistolary cycle, in whatever form and for whatever
purpose, was a text well known and in wide circulation among Greek speakers so that
there would be interest in the composition of yet another cycle, our own, in the 6th
century, as Grignaschi and Maróth suggest. If this is problematic about the date of
composition, then it becomes even more difficult to account for the way in which the
elite in Umayyad government circles could have heard about it. If Salim Ab u l-‘Ala’ was
a determining factor in the process of translation of the document, both in initiating and
executing it, as he appears to have been from all the evidence, the question is to what
extent he was familiar with arcane Greek sources. For Salim, just like his protégé, ‘Abd
al-Hamıd b. Yahya, was of Persian descent, and he and ‘Abd al-Hamıd introduced
˙ ˙ ˙
Persian stylistic and other elements in the Arabic epistolary style they were developing.38
Certainly in the chancellery in Damascus, Salim could have found Greek functionaries
who could have easily translated the cycle for him, but the real question is how Salim
would have known about it in the first place and why he should have thought of it as
worth translating. His Persian background would not have prepared him to appreciate
and demand something like this unless the cycle had had some presence and influence in
Middle Persian. Now not only a significant amount of classical material in general
passed into Arabic through the mediation of Middle Persian, but the romance of
Alexander in particular, one version of the Ps.-Callisthenes, was translated into Syriac
not directly from the Greek but from a Middle Persian intermediary, as Th. Nöldeke
demonstrated long ago.39 Since Nöldeke’s time, more evidence has surfaced to make
more likely the Middle Persian avenue of transmission of this sort of literature. One
Hellenistic Greek novel from the first century B.C. or after Christ, Metiochos and
Parthenope, appears in the 11th century in the New Persian verse romance W amiq wa-
‘Ad ra’ by al-‘Unsurı. Al-‘Unsurı must have based his version on the Arabic translation of
 ˙ ˙
the novel, as Ibn an-Nadım again informs us (Fihrist 120,9–10 Flügel), by Sahl b.
Har un, al-Ma’m un’s director of the Bayt al-hikma. Ibn an-Nadım goes on to say
˙
(120,17) that Sahl translated from the (Middle) Persian; thus if there was ever any doubt
about the language from which Salim Ab u l-‘Ala’ translated the epistolary cycle, there
can be none in the case of Sahl.40 Faced with these problems and this evidence, it is clear
that the whole question of the origins and transmission of the epistolary cycle needs to be
revisited by taking into full consideration the Middle Persian/Sasanian context and by re-
evaluating the many useful hints in that direction provided by Shaked, Grignaschi, and
van Bladel.
Another major issue that has received scant, if any, attention is the structure of the
cycle and its compilation. Already Walzer41 in 1934, and then the scholars of the 1960s
and Maróth (p. 4), describe the contents of the cycle as if it consisted of 16 letters.
Strictly speaking, this is inaccurate. The cycle consists, as listed above, of 14 letters, two
gnomologies, and 10 narrative pieces (some only a couple of lines long). The narrative
line is the cement that holds the whole together and makes it into a composition that can
be talked about as a unit. The question of the identity of the author of the narrative line is
crucial not only for dating the cycle but also, and in particular, for identifying the very
nature and genre of the composition. To wit: the narrator says (x20, Narrative 8) that
Alexander went to the steppe between Kirman and H urasan after conquering Persia and

defeated the H urasanians. It is taken by Grignaschi, ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’

(pp. 110–11) and Maróth (p. 41), correctly, that this must indicate a period of com-
position in Islamic, particularly Umayyad times. Similarly, the narrator says (xx7, 9,
Narratives 3–4) that Philip died after an illness. No Greek author, or anyone remotely
66 D. Gutas

familiar with either the historical or the romance (Ps.-Callisthenes) tradition of

Alexander in Greek (as both Grignaschi and Maróth maintain) could have written this.
A Greek author would have known that Philip was assassinated by Pausanias. Thus all
indications are that the narrative line was composed in Umayyad times by the Arabic
translator or compiler or, if it was indeed he, by Salim. But if that is the case, then this
person must also be considered as the one who strung together the disparate and
independent epistles that he found in the tradition to create the cycle we have been
discussing, and therefore this cycle, as a cycle, exists only in Arabic, not in the source
language, regardless whether that was Middle Persian or Greek.
And this brings me to the final major issue, that of the genre of the cycle. Previous
scholars have been content to call it ‘roman’ (Grignaschi) or ‘novel’ (Maróth) without
discussion. But it is hardly possible to be cavalier about this issue in contemporary
studies. The past decades have seen a virtual explosion of serious and critical thinking
about the ancient novel in all its manifestations, including the question of typology of
genres, as a brief look at the enormous bibliographies of Gareth Schmeling and his
Festschrift will show (to name but only one of the most prominent scholars on the
subject).42 As Holzberg argues, the surviving Greek epistolary cycles, whose audience he
tries to identify, cannot be considered ‘novels’ in so far as they were taken by that
audience as authentic, and not fictitious, writings by the authors concerned;43 hence his
preference for the term ‘fringe novels’ for them. No one has discussed our Arabic cycle
in these terms, but even if one assumed that the narrative line connecting the various
epistles was ultimately of Greek origin, would the same considerations apply in
determining its genre? And if the narrative line was written in Arabic, then can one talk
of a ‘Greek novel?’ or even an Arabic novel, given that it was manifestly intended, if it
was to function as a mirror for princes, to be taken as the ipsissima verba of Alexander and
Aristotle?
These and many other questions are raised by this apocryphal epistolary cycle
published in its entirety for the first time by Maróth. He is to be complimented for the
accomplishment, although it is a pity that he did not translate the whole into English so
that even non-Arabist scholars of the ancient novel, whose numbers are, as I just
mentioned, legion, would gain access to it and possibly provide some answers or helpful
suggestions for some of the many problems besetting it. But the text at least is edited
satisfactorily and reliably. A few soundings of the text against the Fatih MS revealed only
minor mistakes or misprints.
For example: p. 13,5 read annaka for innaka; p. 13,12 read wa-‘lam without hamza
under the alif; p. 21,5 read laysa after fa-innah u, added in the margin with sahha
˙ ˙˙
notation; p. 21,12 read fa-rubba-m a; p.21,-5 read ’wrfy [Europe] instead of ’wrqy, p. 25,
-3 read ǧamı‘an, without tašdıd; etc. By contrast, the Arabic texts cited in the
introductory section on pp. 16-22 have many misprints and should be read with caution.
Also deplorable is the absence of an index of names and words for the Arabic text.
However, there is hardly any discussion of the manuscript transmission and the
establishment of the text, and the apparatus criticus is skimpy both with regard to the
readings of the two MSS themselves and the indirect transmission of the many passages
for which it exists. The Fatih MS has a number of marginal corrections (not all of which
are recorded as such in the apparatus), and the scribe took care to signal the provenance
of each: some corrections are marked sahha, the result of collation (marked with a
˙ ˙˙
number of balaga _ notes in the margins) against the exemplar from which the MS was
copied, while others are marked as nush a, referring to corrections made from another

 On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’ 67

MS containing the same text. A stemmatic analysis of these readings, their relation to the
two extant MSS and to the secondary tradition, as well as to the details of the colophon
in the MSS discussed above, may have provided a more accurate picture of the
transmission of the work. It is never clear beforehand whether these details would have
made much difference in the final establishment of the text, but given its extremely
complex nature, such details may in the end prove decisive—if not always in textual
emendation, then in settling matters of transmission and affiliation.
For the rest, Maróth spends an inordinate amount of time and effort in the English
section of the book trying to establish the uniquely Greek provenance of the cycle: after a
brief introduction about the text and the manuscripts, he discusses in three chapters
Greek epistolography as the basis of the cycle, Greek gnomologia as the basis of the
wisdom sayings in it, and Greek political, historiographic, and ethical theories as the
basis of its intellectual contents; a lengthy polemical fourth chapter presents arguments
in refutation of Grignaschi’s theories about the origins of the cycle, as mentioned above;
and a very brief final chapter offers suggestions in explanation of the popularity of the
novel. Maróth tells us that his conclusion of the exclusively Greek origins of the cycle
offers ‘convincing proof that verifies the widely accepted supposition of Greek influence’
on Arabic adab literature (p. 10)—indeed, his very last concluding sentence is that
‘Arabic prose literature, especially adab literature, appeared first in Syria, where it
continued the Greek literary tradition’ (p. 98). This conclusion is too embarrassing for
comment,44 although some aspects of Maróth’s research on certain Greek antecedents of
the epistolary cycle are certainly useful; however, his failure to take in consideration
recent work establishing the multicultural context of late antiquity I spoke about at the
outset and the significance of the Middle Persian influence for the transmission of the
cycle, or, for that matter, contemporary views about the formation of Arabic adab
literature, makes this study one-dimensional. But as it is, and especially in the very
welcome publication of the Arabic text, there is sufficient basis for future work on the
Alexander–Aristotle epistolary cycle, and it is to be hoped that students of literature in
antiquity, late antiquity, and early Islam, and in whichever classical language (including
Middle Persian), will turn their attention to this fascinating text that bestrides their many
disciplines.

Acknowledgements
With thanks to Kevin van Bladel and Hilary Kilpatrick for a number of references,
suggestions, and corrections.

Notes
1. Grignaschi (1996, p. 117), says that this treatise was first discovered by the Italian scholar Armellini
in 1860 in MS Vatican Ar. 408 (which was also used by Lippert see below, note 16), but he does not
give any references; see M. Grignaschi, ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe: la correspondence entre
Aristote et Alexandre’, in The Problematics of Power. Eastern and Western Representations of Alexander
the Great, ed. M. Bridges and J. Ch. Bürgel (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996), 109–23, at 117.
2. M. Manzalaoui, ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Kit ab Sirr al-asr ar. Facts and Problems’, Oriens 23–4
(1974): 147–257; and M. Grignaschi, ‘La «Siyasatu-l-‘ammiyya» et l’influence iranienne sur la
pensée politique Islamique’, in Monumentum H.S. Nyberg III [Acta Iranica 6] (Leiden: Brill, 1975).
3. Kevin van Bladel, ‘The Iranian Characteristics and Forged Greek Attributions in the Arabic Sirr
ar (Secret of Secrets)’, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 57 (2004): 151–72; see also Shaul
al-asr
Shaked, From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995).
68 D. Gutas

4. Steven J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets. The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin
Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
5. Regula Forster, Das Geheimnis der Geheimnisse. Die arabischen und deutschen Fassungen des pseudo-
aristotelischen, Sirr al-asrar/Secretum secretorum (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2006).
6. Segments of these letters were regularly used by medieval biographers and authors of gnomologia in
their works; a complete listing of such excerpts in subsequent Arabic literature cannot be given here,
but only the major occurrences will be reported. As for secondary literature, partial translations and
analyses of various segments can be found in all the works by Bielawski, Grignaschi, Stern, and
Manzalaoui presented, which should be constantly consulted; again, here only the major references
are provided; see J. Bielawski, ‘Lettres d’Aristote à Alexandre le Grand en version arabe’, Rocznik
Orientalistyczny 28 (1964): 7–34; J. Bielawski and M. Plezia, eds, Lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre sur la
politique envers les cités (Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków: Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1970); M. Grignaschi,
‘Les «Rasa’il ’Aristatalısa ’ila-l-Iskandar» de Salim Ab u-l-‘Ala’ et l’activité culturelle à l’époque
˙ ˙
omayyade’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales 19 (1966): 7–83; M. Grignaschi, ‘Le roman épistolaire
classique conservé dans la version arabe de Salim Ab u-l-‘Ala’’, Le Muséon 80 (1967): 211–64;
Grignaschi, ‘La «Siyasatu-l-‘ammiyya’’; M. Grignaschi, ‘La figure d’Alexandre chez les Arabes et sa
genèse’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3 (1993): 205–34; Grignaschi, ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-
arabe’; S.M. Stern, ‘The Arabic Translations of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise De Mundo’, Le
Muséon 77 (1964): 187–204 [reprinted in Fuat Sezgin, Pseudo-Aristotelica Preserved in Arabic
Translation I, Islamic Philosophy vol. 107 (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arab-
Islamic Science, 2000), 241–58]; S.M. Stern, ‘A Third Arabic Translation of the Pseudo-Aristotelian
Treatise De Mundo,’, Le Muséon 78 (1965): 381–93 [reprinted in Sezgin, Pseudo-Aristotelica
Preserved, 259–71]; S.M. Stern, Aristotle on the World State (Columbia, S.C.: University of South
Carolina Press, 1968); and Manzalaoui, ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian’. There is, finally, a discussion of
the social context and significance of the cycle in a recent article by G. Fowden, ‘Pseudo-Aristotelian
Politics and Theology in Universal Islam,’ in Ancient Greece and Ancient Iran: Cross-Cultural
Encounters, ed. S.M.R. Darbandi and A. Zournatzi (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation,
2008), 65–81, at 65–7. The numbers in square brackets at the end of entries refer to the pages in
Maróth’s edition in which the passage in question occurs.
7. See Grignaschi, ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’, 119–20.
8. al-Mubaššir b. Fatik, Muh t ar al-hikam, ed. ‘A. Badawı (Madrid: al-Ma‘had al-Misrı li-d-Dirasat al-
 ˙ ˙
Islamiyya, 1958).
9. ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’, 109n1.
10. L. Cheikho, ‘At aran li-Aristu  al-faylas
uf fı l-‘arabiyya’, Al-Machriq 10 (1907): 273–8; reprinted in L.
 ˙
Malouf, C. Eddé and L. Cheikho, eds, Traités inédits d’anciens philosophes arabes musulmans et
chrétiens . . . publiés dans la revue Al-Machriq, 2e éd. (Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1911), 36–40;
reprinted in Sezgin, Pseudo-Aristotelica Preserved, 46–51.
11. Miskawayh, Al-Hikma al-h a lida, ed. ‘A. Badawı (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya, 1952) (repr.
˙  ˙ ˙
Beirut, 1980), 219–25; al-Mubaššir, Muh t ar, p. 186, 15ff.

12. Grignaschi, ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’, 109n2.
13. Grignaschi, ibid., 114–115, suggests that (the Boeotian) Amphictyones lies behind this word. Earlier
scholars read it as Amphissa.
14. Bielawski, ‘Lettres d’Aristote à Alexandre le Grand’, pp. 19–25; and Girgnaschi, ‘La «Siyasatu-l-
‘ammiyya», pp. 97–197. See the entry by M. Zonta, ‘Pseudo-Aristote, Secretum secretorum,’ in
Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, Supplément (Paris: CNRS, 2003), 648–51.
15. al-Mubaššir, Muh t ar, pp. 129–31.

16. Julius Lippert, De epistula pseudaristotelica PEPI BASILEIAS commentatio (Halle-Berlin: Mayer und
Müller, 1891), 1–13, with Latin translation and commentary [reprinted in Sezgin, Pseudo-Aristotelica
Preserved, 1–45 ]; and L. Cheikho, ‘At aran li-Aristu  al-faylas
uf fı l-‘arabiyya’, Al-Machriq 10 (1907):
 ˙
311–19 [reprinted in Malouf, Eddé and Cheikho, Traités inédits d’anciens philosophes, 40–49; reprinted
in Sezgin, Pseudo-Aristotelica Preserved, 52–60].
17. Bielawski and Plezia, Lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre, pp. 29-54; Bielawski, ‘Lettres d’Aristote à
Alexandre le Grand’, 14–19; Stern, Aristotle on the World State; P. Carlier, ‘Étude sur la prétendue
lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre transmise par plusieurs manuscrits arabes (I),’ Ktema 5 (1980) 277–88;
R. Weil, ‘Sur la «lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre»,’ in Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung, Paul Moraux
gewidmet, ed. J. Wiesner (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), 1, 485–98; and Grignaschi, ‘La figure
d’Alexandre’, pp. 226–7 and ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’, pp. 117–19.
 On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’ 69

18. ‘Les «Rasa’il ’Aristatalısa ’ila-l-Iskandar»’, pp. 59–60, 63–4.

˙ ˙
19. Mary Boyce, The Letter of Tansar (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1968),
27.
20. Grignaschi, ‘Les «Rasa’il ’Aristatalısa ’ila-l-Iskandar»’, 60–2, 64–6.
˙ ˙
21. Boyce, The Letter of Tansar, pp. 27–8.
22. Stern, ‘The Arabic Translations’ and ‘A Third Arabic Translation’; and Bielawski, ‘Lettres d’Aristote
à Alexandre le Grand’, pp. 25–7.
23. D.A. Brafman, The Arabic ‘De Mundo’: An Edition with translation and Commentary, Ph.D.
dissertation, Duke University, 1985.
24. ‘Les «Rasa’il ’Aristatalısa ’ila-l-Iskandar’, 69–73. See the entry by W. Raven, ‘De Mundo. Tradition
˙ ˙
syriaque et arabe,’ in Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, Supplément (Paris: CNRS, 2003), 481–3.
25. ‘Le roman épistolaire classique’, 261–3.
26. S.P. Brock, ‘The Laments of the Philosophers over Alexander in Syriac’, Journal of Semitic Studies 15
(1970): 205–18.
27. Hunayn b. Ishaq, Ād ab al-fal  tat al-‘Arabiyya, 1985),
asifa, ed. ‘A. Badawı (Kuwayt: Ma‘had al-Mah tu
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
97–107.
28. For the letter of consolation see A. Spitaler, ‘Die arabische Fassung des Trostbriefs Alexanders an
seine Mutter,’ in Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida, vol. II (Roma: Istituto per
l’Oriente, 1956), 493–508; for al-Hatimı’ s collection see F. Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam
˙
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 261–3.
29. I have a copy of the Fatih MS; the date is given on the final page. The date of the Ayasofya MS is
given by Grignaschi, ‘Le roman épistolaire classique’, p. 714. Maróth mistakes the date of the lost
copy by ‘Alı b. Muhammad (see further below in this paragraph) with that of the extant Istanbul MSS
˙
when he says (p. 2) that ‘they were copied at the end . . . of the eleventh century.’
30. The Fatih MS, which I have seen, and the Ayasofya MS, according to Grignaschi’s ‘Le roman
épistolaire classique’ text on p. 215, clearly have 491 (tis‘ın) and not 471 as listed on the following
page by Grignaschi.
31. For the form of the first name see GAS IX,202 and Hadiyyat al-‘Ārifın 426, 6 (Istanbul, 1955) .
The patronymic is vocalized in the Fatih MS as Mu’ammil, which is the form of this name (and
not Mu’ammal as vocalized by Grignaschi 216 and Maróth 94); cf. GAS I,114 and II,471. Both
are apparently older Arabic names that fell out of use in later times; Mu’ammil is also a Christian
name: see G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, Vatican 1947, II,78. So the full
name, as we have it, would mean, ‘Hoped-for the son of Hopeful’, which somewhat strains
credulity.
32. See D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (London: Routledge, 1998), 131.
33. Maróth, p. 97; Grignaschi, ‘La figure d’Alexandre’, 227, and ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’,
114, even argues for A.D. 517 as the terminus post quem (disputed by Maróth 75–6).
34. ‘La «Siyasatu-l-‘ammiyya’’», pp. 62–82; ‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-arabe’, pp. 109–13.
35. See M. Plezia, Aristoteles. Privatorm scriptorum fragmenta (Leipzig: Teubner, 1977), Epist. test. 2a,
test. 10–15 and fragm. 4–6; and Niklas Holzberg, ‘The Genre: Novels Proper and the Fringe’, and
‘Novel-like Works of Extended Prose Fiction II: E. Letters: Chion’, in The Novel in the Ancient World,
ed. Gareth Schmeling (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 11–28 and 645–53, see p. 648n15.
36. A case in point is provided by the Homeric citations, which are all spurious: Twenty ps.-Homeric
citations from all the cycle are collected, printed, and translated into French by Grignaschi, ‘Le
roman épistolaire classique’, p. 256–61. Grignaschi (p. 225) took them to be imitations of Homer
intended as exercises (metaphraseis) in schools of rhetoric, but later (‘Un roman épistolaire gréco-
arabe’, p. 111) he changed his mind and thought they might be part of Menander’s Monostichoi
that passed into Arabic as Homer’s. This, however, is not accurate: the example which he provides
in The Problematics of Power (he refers to, but does not actually cite, the following saying: l a yasluhu
˙ ˙
l-mula‘u bi-l-kid bi hatt a yasluha t -t a‘labu li-d -d i’bi) is an anonymous saying that is not part of
 ˙ ˙ ˙    
Menander’s one-liners; it is discussed in detail by J. Kraemer, ‘Arabische Homerverse’, ZDMG 106
(1956): 290–1. Thus the question of the provenance of the ps.-Homeric citations remains open, in
which case even a Middle Persian origin may be envisaged, given that Sasanian wisdom was
demonstrably put in the mouth of Greek authorities: see van Bladel, ‘The Iranian Characteristics’,
pp. 165–8.
37. The mention by the sixth century philosopher Philoponus of Aristotle’s letters to Alexander on
kingship and colonization (Plezia, Aristoteles, Epist. test. 7.A.c¼In Cat. 3,22–24 Busse) is a
70 D. Gutas

bibliographical reference in the context of the classification of Aristotle’s works; as such, it constitutes
information transmitted in the tradition and not an indication of Philoponus’s access to such
correspondence. But cf. Fowden, ‘Pseudo-Aristotelian Politics’, p. 74n12.
38. See the entries on ‘Abd al-Hamıd in EI2 and EIr. As van Bladel’s (‘The Iranian Characteristics’,
˙
p. 155) lapidary statement puts it, ‘We might expect a Persian translator to be rather a translator of
Persian works.’
39. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alexanderromans (Vienna, 1890). For a response to Ciancaglini’s objections
to Nöldeke’s theory see now K. van Bladel, ‘The Syriac Sources of the Early Arabic Narratives of
Alexander,’ in Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in South Asia, ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray
and Daniel T. Potts (New Delhi: Aryan International, 2007), 61–64 and 70–1.
40. Tomas Hägg, ‘The Oriental Reception of Greek Novels. A survey with Some Preliminary
Considerations’, Symbolae Osloenses 61 (1986) 99–131, at pp. 106–9.
41. Richard Walzer, ‘Arabische Aristotelesübersetzungen in Istanbul,’ Gnomon 10 (1934): 277–80
[reprinted in his Greek into Arabic (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1962), 137–41], at p. 139 (page
references are to the latter).
42. Schmeling, The Novel in the Ancient World; and Schmeling Festschrift, Authors, Authority and
Interpreters in the Ancient novel: Essays in Honor of Gareth L. Schmeling, ed. Shannon N. Byrne,
Edmund P. Cueva and Jean Alvares (Groningen: Groningen University Library, 2006).
43. Holzberg, ‘The Genre: Novels Proper and the Fringe’, pp. 26–8.
44. In support of this Graeco-centric approach, which leads Maróth to such infelicitous statements as,
‘all scholars who deal with the [sic] Arabic literature share the opinion that the Arabic adab-literature
has developed under Greek influence’ (p. 10), he cites only the studies by Reitzenstein (1923),
Kerényi (1927), and Becker (1931), with the most recent authority being an article by von
Grunebaum first published in 1944! Even a cursory glance at the article ‘Adab’ by F. Gabrieli in the
second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (to say nothing of other, more specialized literature)
would have saved him the embarrassment.