About hydronyms in the poem “Iskandernâmeh” by Nizami Ganjavi

Abstract

The object of this study is hydronyms (geographical objects’s names) in the poem “Iskandarnâmeh”  (“Book about Alexander, the Great”) (1197) by Nizami Ganjavi (XII century). While composing “Iskandarnâmeh”, according to our observations, Nizami used medieval historical and geographical information from Muslim historians. Our observations on the toponyms (place names) used in the artistic-descriptive and expressive means in Nizami's “Iskandarnâmeh” show, that the poet benefited from the information available in the historicalgeographical sources of the Middle Ages in the interpretation and description of these lexical units he used while writing the poem. Describing and celebrating the life, campaigns, adventures of Iskander Zulgarnain (“Two-horned”) Rumi or Makduni (Alexander, the Great) Nizami Ganjavi drew valuable information from medieval Arabic geographical and historical sources  when presenting and observing with geographical names of all types and as an encyclopedist-erudite, like most of his predecessors and contemporaries, scholars, poets and thinkersrepresentatives of Islamic civilization, was comprehensively aware of that diverse geographical literature with various titles of medieval science.