Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

THE VERSIONS OF THE ALEXANDER STORY. XXHI
contents of the most important narratives by Arabs
and Persians is given by Noeldeke in his BeitrUge,
so often quoted here, to this the reader is referred.
Before passing on, however, it must be noted that
the Persians made Alexander to be the son of a
Persian king!
The Alexander story having found its way into Siamese and
Arabic and Persian, it is only natural that it should sions.
be translated into the languages of still more re-
mote Eastern countries, and according to the late
Col. Yule' versions in Malay and Siamese were
made.
Returning once again to the land of Egypt we The copuc
now know that the Egyptian Christians, or Copts,
who lived in Upper Egypt, possessed a Coptic
version of the Alexander story, and fragments
of this version have been found and published.^
Of the translator nothing is known, and of the
period when the translation was made all that
can be said is that it was probably before the
Xth century.
Towards the end of the XlVth century a Turkish The Turkish
• 1 . /- 1 A 1 1 • versions,
poetical version of the Alexander story was written
by Taj al-Din Ahmed ibn Ibrahim el-Ahmedi, who
based his work on the Iskender Nameh of Nizami.^
Ser Marco Polo, 2nd. edit., vol. i. p. iii.
^ See Bouriant, Fragments cPun Roman (^Alexandre en
dialecte Thebain (see/. S. A., Ser. 8. torn. ix. 1887; and Crum,
Froc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. vol. xiv. p. 473 ff.).
5 See Rieu^ Catalogue of Turkish MSS., p. 162^.