the ‘outside’ other 19
(= urban, civilized) world, as a punishment for the sins of the (civi-
lized) people.^18
Th e horror provoked in Christian Byzantium by the people from
the North, who one day would conquer Constantinople in order to
fulfi ll the prophecy about Gog and Magog joining Antichrist at the
end of the world was at the origin of a special genre, the so-called his-
torical apocalyptic texts of eschatological nature.^19 Th e Byzantine leg-
ends about Alexander the Great were developed in a similar context,
especially aft er the mid-ninth century (perhaps because of the interest
shown by the Macedonian dynasty in Byzantium towards this image-
notion which was full with great potential). A common theme during
this period was that of the “impure/unclean” people from the North,
whom Alexander had subdued and pushed out beyond the Caspian
Gates with the help of God. Th ose “evil” people were regarded in Byz-
antium a total antithesis not just of Christianity, i.e., of Byzantium,
but of humanity as well.^20 According to the Byzantine doctrine and in
relation to the idea that the Danube River constituted the border of the
oikoumene, the people living between the Dnieper and the Dniester
Rivers and to the north of the Caucasus Mountains were regarded as
inhabiting the oikoumene’s border land. Th ey would be the last barrier
in front of the Byzantine civilization in relation to some people liv-
ing further to the north and for that considered even more “evil” and
frightening; at the same time, they were useful for the Byzantine iden-
tity as well, for they were both foreign and diff erent. In other words,
from a Byzantine point of view, both Qubrat’s “Great Bulgaria” and
the Khazar polity were “neighboring” foreigners.^21
Th e nomads living to the north of those real walls naturally regarded
their neighbors to the south as the Other. Th ere was no notion in the
world of the nomads of Alexander the Great and his deeds. Th is is
especially true for the sixth century, when from Mongolia to South-
eastern Europe the nomads were ‘locked behind the walls’, and stood in
almost permanent confl ict with the neighboring Byzantines, Iranians,
and Chinese.
(^18) Shukurov 1999, 23.
(^19) For this see, Alexander 1978 (N XV). For the Bulgarian works of that same type
see, Tapkova-Zaimova and Miltenova 1996.
(^20) See, Zhivotut na Alexandur 1991, 39. 6–8; Tapkova-Zaimova and Miltenova
1996, 174, 178; Vachkova 2004, 137.
(^21) Vachkova 2004, 137–138.