Iskandar Zulkarnain
Minangkabau · mortal · Minangkabau traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Iskandar Zulkarnain, the two-horned world-conqueror of Qur'anic and Malay legend, stands at the head of the Minangkabau tambo as the apical ancestor of kings. The chronicles hold that his three sons parted to rule the earth: Maharaja Alif taking the lands of the west, Maharaja Dipang the east, and the youngest, Maharaja Diraja, sailing to the archipelago and to Sumatra. Through this descent the Minangkabau bound their ruling house to the prestige of a genealogy shared across the Malay world, a device common to Sumatran and Peninsular court literature that anchored local sovereignty in a universal imperial past.
Children
Domains
- royal progenitor
Powers
- sire the royal lineage of the archipelago
Relations
- child: Sri Maharaja DirajaDjamaris, Edwar. 1991. Tambo Minangkabau. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, pp. 42-48. (secondary)
Sources
- In the Minangkabau tambo the royal house descends from Iskandar Zulkarnain, whose three sons Maharaja Alif, Maharaja Dipang and Maharaja Diraja inherit the realms of the world.: Djamaris, Edwar. 1991. Tambo Minangkabau. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, pp. 40-55. (secondary); Josselin de Jong, P.E. de. 1951. Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan. Leiden: Ijdo, pp. 98-101. (secondary)