Alexander Stories in Ajami Turkic

The book contains an edition of a collection of six stories about Alexander Dhulqarnain found in a manuscript kept in St. Petersburg, together with a translation, analyses of the language and the literary content, and indices. The stories must have been written in some variety of Western Oghuz Turkic in Iran, but the manuscript itself is a rather late copy, produced in a Kipchak-Chaghatay environment (presumably Kazan). The content of the stories are of the adventurous kind, and betray a background of more or less popular performances by storytellers. One striking feature is the interest taken in mechanical contraptions, such as automata for the purpose of the defence of castles.