A literary history of Persia

THE PERSIAN EPICas follows. The first Dara demanded in marriage the daughterof Philip of Macedon, but afterwards, being displeased withher, divorced her and sent her back to her father. On herreturn she gave birth to Alexander, who was in reality her sonby Dara, though Philip, anxious to conceal the slight putupon his daughter by the Persian King, gave out that the boyv/as his own son by one of his wives. Hence Alexander, inwresting Persia from his younger half-brother, the second Dara,did but seize th.it to which, as elder son of the late King,he was entitled, and is thus made to close the glorious period ofthe ancient Pishdadf and Kayaiu kings. In the thirdversion, represented by the Sif(andar-n&ma ofAlexander in theN/W/mW (twelfth century), he is identified with aSih.iiu.ar-iiama.ft*mysterious personage called Dhu'l-^arnayn (" Thetwo-horned ") mentioned in the Qur'anas a contemporary ofMoses (with whom some suppose him to be identical), and,instructed by his wise and God-fearing tutor Aristotle (Arhtii,AristAtalis}, represents the ideal monotheistic king, bent onthe destruction of the false creed of the heathen Persians. Itisimportant to bear in mind these different conceptions ofAlexander, and also the fact that he does not really survive inthe genuine national remembrance, but has been introduced,together with Darius, from a foreign source, while the nationalmemory goes no further back than the Sasanians.Concerning the Parthian period we must notice, besides itsvery scanty and unsympathetic treatment, the curious fact thatwhereas five centuries and a half actually elapsedParthian 'period.between the death of Alexander and the establishmentof the Sasanian dynasty, this period is habitually reducedthe learned Ma^udl in hisby the Persian and Arab historians to 266 years.The falsity,as well as the reason, of this arbitrary and misleading chronologyis understood and explained by-t-tanblh wa'l-ishrdf 1 as follows. When Ardashir1See the excellent edition published by de GoejeGcografhorum Arabiccntm (vol. viii, pp. 97-9, Leyden, 1893),in his Bibliotheca