How Alexander The Great Became Iskandar Zulkarnain, The Legendary Ancestor Of Malay Kings

An exhibition at the British Library titled Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth details how Alexander the Great became Iskandar Zulkarnain, the legendary ancestor of Malay kings.

At the age of 25, Alexander the Great, who was born in Macedonia in 356 BC, routed the Persian army. Before his untimely death in Babylon at the age of 32 in 323 BC, Alexander had built an empire over the course of the following seven years that spanned from Greece to Egypt and beyond the Indus river in the east. Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth, on exhibition at the British Library from October 21, 2022, to February 1, 2023, does not, however, center on the historical Alexander, but rather on how other civilizations took the great hero and reshaped him in their own image. Alexander is mentioned in myths and legends in many different languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and Persian, where he is referred to as "the Two-Horned" or Iskandar Dhu al-Qarnayn. Alexander e...