The fifth poem of Nizami’s Khamsah (Quintet), Iskandarnamah, is a two-part account of the life of Alexander the Great or Iskandar as he is called in Persian. Nizami’s portrayal of Alexander as a philosopher-king would have appealed to Akbar, who promoted himself as a just and tolerant ruler.
The legendary life of Alexander the Great is the subject of the British Library’s new exhibition Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth which opened on Friday 21 October. A visual feast of stories spanning more than 2000 years, it centres on the Alexander Romance originally composed in Greek.