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Ann: Hadits Dou’l-Carnain; (The Story of the two Horned) (15^th) (Spain)

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This is one of the many manuscripts discovered in an Aragonese village when an old house was being repaired. It belongs to the 15^th century. The Alexander Romance (=Hadits Dou’l-Carnain) part occupies 51 folios. In it also big battles are fought with people more black then the night.

Taken from: Un texto árabe occidental de la leyenda de Alejandro by Emilio García Gómez

 P30-31

The narrator says: Then we left and marched, walking among deserts, cisterns and painful roads, for a whole month, until we arrived at a land inhabited by people who state to be from the Tobba (1). By their stature and their corpulence they resembled the Arabs; but they were blacker than the night. They had great strength and courage and were prepared to fight us……….

Then we asked them to give us obedience; but they refused, and they began the combat, giving us such a strong attack that, intermingling with us, many men killed us. But then Allah helped us against them and we destroyed them and made great slaughter in them. Then Allah the great and honest gave us to know their language and we demanded of them that they gave us obedience and peace between them and us. And as they refused, we persecuted them, killing many, besieging their cities, and captivating their families but, despite this, they remained impassive. The narrator says: In your country we contemplate many wonders; among them, beasts like birds, but with dog heads, and birds like cats. We remained in that land, until obedience and peace lent us this town, which is a place of the Tobba (1). Says the narrator: After we leave it and march back to the land of Khorasan (2), …………….

P62-63

After we left, and walked towards a forest, where there was a…….. town made up of barefoot and naked people, with black skin, blacker than the crows, with fangs like the fangs of dogs, and who carried javelins in their hands. They ate each other, the strong the weak. Their hair are their clothes, and they constitute the most populous nation of the human race. Their land is black, with a darkness darker than that of the dark night, and they were ready for combat. The narrator says: When we approached them, they went out to meet us screaming, and they attacked us and five hundred men were killed. Then we attacked them with the help of Allah, who gave us strength against them, killing twenty thousand in a single charge, and they fled back to their city. The narrator says: We started after them, and they submitted to us and gave us obedience, and we made peace through a tribute that they were to pay us every year. Then we put one of them in front of him, we stayed in that place a day and a night, and then we left until we reached ………