Song of Alexander

The Song of Alexander (known also as the Syriac Alexander Poem or the Metrical Homily) is a 6th or 7th-century Syriac legend about Alexander the Great. Due to its pseudonymous attribution to Jacob of Serugh (451–521), the author is now called Pseudo-Jacob (or Ps-Jacob for short).

The Song is believed to have been written shortly after an earlier Syriac legend about Alexander, called the Syriac Alexander Legend, and the dating of the Song has largely depended in scholarship on when the Legend itself has been dated to. There are two views about the relationship between them: dependence of the Song on the Legend, advocated by Theodor Nöldeke and Gerrit Reinink, and the view that they rely on a common source, advocated by Wilhelm Bousset. Most scholars now accept the dependence view, but the debate has not been settled.

The Legend has been traditionally dated to ~628 AD, leading to a date of the 630s for the Song. A recent redating of the Legend to the mid-6th century may allow for the Song to be dated to the late 6th century.

In antiquity, the Song was translated into an Arabic version known from two manuscripts.

The standard critical edition of the Syriac text today was published by Reinink in 1983. In 1889, Budge published a Syriac edition and English translation.