Alexander the Great in the Quran into Arabic. The Greek work "Thesaurus Alexandri" was attributed to Hermes (the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology) and similarly contained supposed letters from Aristotle addressed to Alexander. A more direct Arabic translation of the "Alexander romance," called "Sirat Al-Iskandar", was discovered in Constantinople, at the Hagia Sophia, and is dated to the 13th century. This version includes the letter from Alexander to his mother about his travels in India and at the end of the World. It also includes features which occur exclusively in the Syriac version. The Arabic legend also retains certain pagan elements of the
The Gods of Pegāna the procedure one step further than any of his conceivable predecessors – William Beckford ("Vathek"), William Morris with his medieval fantasies – by inventing an entire cosmogony ... Dunsany embodies his new realm with his own philosophical predilections, and these predilections – although expressed in the most gorgeously evocative of prose-poetry – are of a very modern, even radical sort". The chief of the gods of Pegāna is Mana-Yood-Sushai, who created the other gods and then fell asleep; when he wakes, he "will make again new gods and other worlds, and will destroy the gods whom he hath made." Men