(^206) NOTES TO PAGES 88-94
- Ibid., p. 95.
- Ibid., p. 141.
- Ibid., p. 85.
- Ibid., p. 88. ,
- Hajjaj is often harsh in his speech to Qasim, insisting on proving thaf Qasim
is merely a child who is ever in the danger of being taken advantage of. For
example: "I am repulsed by you. Your governance is strange to me. You seem
to really want to grant amnesty. Before being tested, the enemy who appeals
for peace or declares intention to fight cannot be treated equally; the good
and the bad do not deserve similar treatment. By treating them similarly,
you only prove your lack of intelligence, and the enemy will take advantage
of that. I swear on my head and my life that God has given you the ability to
think, but you do not utilize it, and your entire attention is geared toward
giving everyone amnesty without due consideration" (Fathnama, p. II4). - See J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ktesias the Knidian
(London: Triibner and Co., 1882); and J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as De-
scribed by Megasthenes and Arrian (London: Triibner and Co., 1877). - For an excellent overview, see Rudolf Wittkower, "Marvels of the East: A
Study in the History of Monsters," fournal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 5 (1942), pp. 159-197. The logical extension of India as a site of im-
mense wealth and immense wisdom is the emergence, in medieval accounts,
of descriptions which place Paradise "in or beyond" India, "in the desert,
impassable for people, in the oriental zone."See Natalie Lozovsky, The Earth
Is Our Book: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca. 400-rooo
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 59. Such linkages pros-
pered into other supernatural geographies, as in the thirteenth-century long
poem L'Image du Monde or the Hereford Mappa Mundi, as well as in the
development of the rich mythography of Prester John. - Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf
Manuscript (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), p. 229. - The Pahlavi origins of the text, and its translation into Syriac and then Ar-
abic before being disseminated as Secretum Secretorum, is a topic with a
plethora of available scholarship. Most prominent is Mario Grignaschi's "La
Siyiistu-1-Ammiyya et l'Influence Iranienne sur la Pensee Politique Is-
lamique," in Acta Iranica 6, Deuxieme Serie, Monumentum H. S. Nyberg,
III, Tehran-Liege: Bibliotheque Pahlavi (1975), pp. 33-287. For an overview, see
Regula Forster, Das Geheimnis der Geheimnisse: Die Arabischen und
Deutschen Fassungen des Pseudo-Aristotelischen Sirr al-Asrar, Secretum
Secretorum (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2006). A recent examination by Miklos
Maroth lays out some of the themes present in the Letter, which range from a
general introduction to moral and political philosophy, with an emphasis on
questions of governance (such as the treatment of Persian prisoners and taxa-
tion). See Miklos Maroth, The Correspondence between Aristotle and Alex-
ander the Great: An Anonymous Greek Novel in Letters in Arabic Transla-
tion (Piliscsaba: The Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2006). - See Paul Weinfield, "The Islamic Alexander: A Religious and Political Theme
in Arabic and Persian Literature," Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University,