"A strange text first found embedded in the Alexander Romance, and later in stand-alone Latin and Old English versions, purports to be a letter from Alexander to Aristotle describing the wonders of ‘India’ (a term that, in this context, denotes a vaguely defined Far East). Manuscript illustrators delighted in the plethora of fabulous beasts and human grotesques that the letter records: dragons, griffins, sirens, wild men and women, and the comical Sciapods (‘shadow-feet’), contorting themselves to hold a single huge foot up in the air to act as a parasol"

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n01/james-romm/at-the-british-library