Global Souvenirs: Bridging East and West in the Malay Alexander Romance

Abstract

AbstractAttention to Arabic translations that went eastward can uncover neglected connections and exchanges of stories. One such instance is the Malay Alexander Romance, Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain, translated from the Arabic version of Pseudo‐Callisthenes' Greek Alexander Romance. This Islamicization of the Alexander Romance also incorporates elements of Greek culture found elsewhere, such as Homer, suggesting a cultural bridging of east and west through traveling textual elements and stories that could be seen as accretionary globalism. These elements are global souvenirs, with varied origins, incorporated into a different Islamic and Southeast Asian mosaic. Such global souvenirs also come in the form of references to global religions, including, aside from Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Buddhism. The wide‐ranging travels of the hero Iskandar bridges east and west, as he travels to the edges of the world, the Maghrib and Andalusia in the west and China in the east. In these travels, foreign elements are akin to global souvenirs collected and then assimilated into a larger frame that also is adapted to its new Southeast Asian context. The accretionary globalism of Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain, which assimilates narrative elements cross‐culturally, takes as its perspective the world itself, promiscuously crossing boundaries of nation, language, and faith.