Occult Sciences in The Iskandarnameh of Nizami

Abstract

In his last and largest epos, the Iskandarnameh,² Nizami develops the image of an ideal statesman following the concept of Farabi in his political philosophy.³ His hero is Alexander the Great, whom he portrays with this idealized vision in mind, freely deviating from what he found in the sources whenever his vision told him to do so. Besides his military and political faculties, an ideal statesman should incorporate, so the Farabian concept requires, the qualities of a philosopher and ultimately those of a prophet. Nizami’s Sikandar develops according to this concept.⁴ In the first part, the so-called Sharafnameh or “Book of Honor,” we are told all about Sikandar’s conquests; in the second part, the Iqbalnameh or “Book of Blessings,” the poet tackles Sikandar’s experiences as a philosopher and then those of his final stage, that of a prophet.⁵ As a philosopher, Sikandar visits Socrates and has a talk with the Greek sages, but he is also confronted with a number of sciences, including astrology, alchemy and magic, and music and medicine—in other words, the three major branches of the so-called occult sciences, which stand above philosophy according to the Brethren of Purity, and two other sciences, whose effects gave them an aura of magic power as well.⁶ These sciences are not dealt with in an abstract theoretical essay however, but in the form of entertaining stories that throw light on their sometimes wholesome, sometimes dangerous power. The total of these stories is seven, seven being an important number not only in the fourth epos of our poet, the Haft Paikar or “Seven Beauties,” but also in his last poem, where it appears a number of times with an important function: seven battles are fought against the Rus, the number of philosophers gathered around Sikandar is seven et cetera.⁷ Let us now have a somewhat closer look at these seven tales.⁸

A German version of this chapter appeared in Proceedings of the Second European Conference of Iranian Studies, ed. B. Fragner et al. (Rome 1995), pp. 103–12.