Alexander Versus Gog-Magog

My new chapter covers the conflation of the Hebrew myth of Gog-Magog with the Hellenistic legend of the Iron Gate. This is another step in writing a large unit, In the Shade of the Iron Gate. In this particular episode, I explain the motives of those who transformed the unpleasant experience of "barbarian" strikes into the sinister outbreak of monstrous forces on the eve of the Last Battle between the sons of light and the bastards of darkness.
Here is an excerpt:

"When medieval intellectuals discovered the enormous literary and ideological potential of conflating the Biblical myth of Gog-Magog with the Hellenistic legend of the Iron Gates, the romantic tale turned into a theological saga. The setting matched the everlasting conflict between the Christian realm of goodwill and learning versus the apocalyptic anti-world of evil and ignorance.

                The barrier sustains the line of demarcation between the opposite camps and facilitates the authoritarian control over the enclosed territory. “Historia Augusta” is a Late Latin collection of biographies describing the lives and deeds of the Roman rulers. In one of its profiles, an anonymous author praises Emperor Hadrian for putting up a rampart on the westernmost state border as an example of a sovereign who grasped the urgency of segregation between the law-abiding subjects and the illegal immigrants:  "the first to build a wall from sea to sea... to separate the barbarians from the Romans." (1)

                The wall features not only a brick-and-mortar boundary between the people of the sown and the nomads but also a wedge between the adepts of a certain faith and unbelievers. Ibn-Arabi, the philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age, commends the Possessor of Two Horns-the Koranic version of Alexander-for making “a barrier between those of God’s servants who obey him and those who disobey.” (2)

The master of the mountain pass, who functioned as Alexander’s governor, played a leading role in geopolitical games. The sad truth was that the defile recently shifted from the Christian to the Muslim sway. Confirming this, Michael Syrian makes a transit from hearsay tales to actual history: “In earlier times the kings of the peoples of the Orient were said to have guarded these gates, but at present, they are in the hands of the Arabs.” (3)

                The Syriac Early Christian literature, especially the late-seventh century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, linked a barrier episode to the exploits of Alexander. The bulwark cried out for shielding the civilized nations from impure, polluted rabble. However, this time the European military genius confronted the sinister hordes of Gog-Magog rather than plundering barbarian tribes.        

Image: The henchmen of Antichrist are besieging the city of saints

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog#/media/File:Toulouse_ms_815-049v-Gog%26Magog.jpg

A Kernel of Truth (2)

Image: While in transit…

Courtesy: http://www.journeymongolia.com/index.php/item?id=13

My new chapter takes a sincere look at the nomads, trying to access their contribution to the human culture as well as to understand why the pastoralist lifestyle was so hard to digest for the settled people. This extract poses an antithesis to the previous one where I picked up a choir of opinions of outsiders about the migrants. 

Unit IV is going to be the largest part of my book in terms of the number of chapters. The next extract will focus on the second fusion of the legend where Alexander as the guardian of civilization is opposed the ultimate enemy of Gog-Magog. 

Here is the extract from Chapter 4:

How come that the settled population still puts the pastoralists to shame for adhering to the “barbarian” lifestyle?  

These very people grazed their flocks on natural pasturelands of grassy plains and mountain slopes. Stock-herders turned their yurts into true homes that could be put up in the middle of nowhere and give shelter from the fury of the elements. The steppe nomads invented the wheel and perched their dwellings on carts to carry their possessions in wagon trains along beaten tracks. When in need of a reliable individual transport, these unbridled barbarians tamed the horse and adapted it for riding to engage in herding and hunting, trading and raiding. Their high-profile warriors learned how to use horse-drawn chariots as mobile archery platforms and shoot arrows from sigma-shaped compound bows while atop a steed. The migrants donned trousers and subsisted on curd cheese, the flesh of their livestock, and mare’s milk.

The nomadic diet struck the settled populace as bizarre as the steppe folk shunned consuming bread but had no scruples in devouring uncooked meat. Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon who traveled from Prague to the Middle East in the latter half of the twelfth-century comments on the pastoral menu: “They eat no bread… but rice and millet, boiled in milk, as well as milk and cheese. They also put the pieces of flesh under the saddle of a horse… and, urging on the animal, cause it to sweat. The flesh getting warm, they eat it.” (1)

The European decision-makers and the literati would grasp the Caucasus as the frontier zone erected between the sown and the steppe. Beyond their lofty crags lay a vast belt of rolling plains hemmed by baking deserts and dense forests, pierced by steep mountains, and sliced by meandering rivers. This realm controlled by harsh continental climate, swept by incursions of piercing winds and blinding dust storms, and hammered with irregular blizzards and torrential rains, was covered by a carpet of lush grass in the warm season and a blanket of deep snow in winter. Its stubborn soil was too hard to produce grain but supplied sufficient pastures for nomadic livestock accustomed to tread down grasslands bereft of human settlements and fields.

Barbaria was a vast area with imprecise borders which sprawled across the Pontic and Caspian steppes. According to rumors, it stretched in width as far as the northern ocean and in length up to the mysterious dungeon from where the sun rises for its daily watch. Michael the Syrian, the twelfth-century patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the chronicler, defines the homeland of the Turks with unbounded generosity: "Their habitat extends from sunrise to the extreme north of the inhabited world." (2)

Responding to different names, this tough terrain hosted diverse tribes of mounted nomads who engaged non-stop in internecine feuds or preyed on the sedentary population. Sima Qian, the Chinese literati, denounces northern barbarians making devastating inroads on the Middle Kingdom across its frontier zone. He claims that “warfare is their business”. (3) What would the renowned historian have said about other favorite pastimes of steppe dwellers, like hunting trips and night drinking sessions, gambling and smoking weed?