Search for Alexander Off to Shaky Start : History: An Egyptian professor is convinced that the Macedonian king is buried beneath an Alexandria mosque. He has asked for permission to search for the tomb.

The 139th attempt to find Alexander the Great has gotten off to a shaky start and many fear that it will end like the previous 138 attempts--in futility.

An Islamic history professor is convinced that the great Macedonian king, who conquered much of the known world before the age of 30 in the 4th Century BC, is buried in a vault beneath an Alexandria mosque, and he has asked the Department of Antiquities for permission to search for the tomb.

The Egyptian professor, Mohammad Abdulaziz, says he has two witnesses who have seen Alexander’s burial place in a cavern deep under the Prophet Daniel Mosque in the historic Mediterranean city founded by the Macedonian king.

However a professor of Greek history has dismissed the claim, saying he personally has explored under the mosque and found nothing more enticing than some water tanks dating to the 5th Century.

The dispute has caused something of a flap among Alexandria residents and the international archeological community. But it is only the latest controversy in an escalating campaign to find the final resting place of Alexander, which is in turn part of a larger campaign to restore Alexandria to its former glory and increase its tourism potential to boot.

Now the Department of Antiquities must decide whether to grant Abdulaziz’s request to probe under the mosque, the 139th Alexander the Great search proposal it has dealt with in recent times, according to Egyptian media reports.

“I am not going to tear down the mosque or the shrine,” Abdulaziz said recently in answer to critics who fear he will disturb the Islamic holy site. “I don’t mean to search by digging and destroying and scratching. But I am sure the tomb of Alexander the Great exists.”

The Macedonian king, whose empire stretched from Greece to modern-day India to Egypt, died in 323 BC at the age of 33 in Babylon and was, by historic accounts, buried in a royal cemetery in Alexandria, the city on the Egyptian Mediterranean he founded a decade earlier.

Under the Ptolemies, who built the great Alexandria library, Alexandria flourished as the literary and scientific center of the Hellenistic world and, under the Romans, it became a center of commerce.

But archeologists say that over the centuries of invasions, fires and reconstruction, the exact location of Alexander’s tomb became lost to history.

Now archeologists dispute the exact size of the original city and the location of the royal district where Alexander was said to have been buried.

The confusion has bred a small army of explorers, professionals and amateurs of all nationalities and Alexandrians from all walks of life, who have poked and prodded and dug in an as-yet unsuccessful bid to find Alexander’s mortal remains.

“Alexander the Great is famous throughout the world so the tourism and news potential of the discovery of his tomb would be considerable,” one magazine said in explaining the vigorous search.

Egypt has been attempting to restore Alexandria to some of its former glory, planning a new Alexandria library to rival the long-destroyed ancient library and promoting the city as a tourism center.

But so far the search for Alexander has brought more embarrassment than glory. A taxi driver armed with maps almost convinced authorities that the king was located under one of the city’s most prominent office buildings.

Others believe that Alexander is buried under the Al Ramle metro station, and still others think he is interred somewhere in the old Roman cemetery that still exists.

Abdulaziz, a professor of Islamic history at Alexandria University, said he has approached the search by a new angle, studying the early Islamic period between AD 600 and AD 1000 when the tomb disappeared from memory. His research has led him to the Prophet Daniel Mosque, which he says is located on the site of a crossroads of two ancient Alexandria thoroughfares.