Persian Sindbadnama
But most scholars now assume that the Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad story-matter was first written down in Persian, in a version now lost. Several early Arabic and Persian historians evidence the existence of a Persian book about Sindbad, which Krönung 2016 dates to the sixth to seventh centuries but may also have been written earlier or later. The Persian historian Hamza of Isfahan, for example, states in his Annals of Persian history (961CE) that a book with this title was written after the death of Alexander the Great and before the arrival of the Sasanians, under the Arsacid kings of Armenia (Perry 1960). Perry (1960) points out that literature at that time must have been written in Greek or possibly Syriac or Aramaic, but not Persian, but emphasises that for Hamza, the book was already old and associated with Persia in 961AD. Michael Andreopoulos in his Greek Syntipas (c. 1090–1100CE) mentions a previous story of Sindbad by “Mousos the Persian”. Most academics agree that Mousos/Musa was an Arabic writer who translated an existing story in Pahlavi (Middle Persian) into Arabic (Nöldeke 1879, Krönung 2016, Belcher 1987). Ẓahīrī in his Sindbādnāma states that the text was translated from Pahlavi (Middle Persian) into Dari (Persian) in the 950–951CE. The current scholarly consensus, following Perry 1960, is that a Pahlavi (Middle Persian) text was translated into Arabic and from there into Syriac and then Greek (Krönung 2016), as well as continuing to be transmitted in Persian.
Other ninth- and tenth-century Arabic historians also mention that the story may have had Indian precursors. While much older scholarship presumed an Indian version predating the Persian text, most academics since Perry (1960) think that this may be unlikely, as no written traces of such an Indian versions have been found, though this is still considered a possibility by Krönung 2016.
Entered by Bettina Bildhauer
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