The Sultan and the Queen

Title: The Sultan and the Queen – The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam

Author: Jerry Brotton

Publisher: Viking, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9780525428824

Pages: 338

Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was a defining moment in the history of England. Henry VIII’s adoption of the faith which the popish clergy termed as apostasy forced the country’s destiny to diverge from that of continental Europe where Pope’s writ reigned supreme. The catholic world devised all means in their power to browbeat England away from Protestantism. However, Queen Elizabeth I turned into a bulwark of national pride and prestige. Her subjects boldly stood behind their monarch in fighting off the forces of Catholicism. However, England needed to have allies in their war and trade efforts. Who else can be more apt than the Muslim powers that rimmed the Mediterranean littoral who were themselves enemies of the catholic states? England soon established relations with the Ottoman, Moroccan and Persian empires. Trade and cultural interactions with them flourished towards the close of sixteenth century. English theater came to be a mirror of public opinion of the impact created by the increased interchange with Muslims. This book is a summary of the brief period of Elizabeth’s reign, how England obtained a good commercial rapport with Islamic kingdoms and how it all tumbled down after the death of Elizabeth. Jerry Brotton is a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London. He is a renowned broadcaster and critic, as well as the author of many books on East-West relations and history of early-Modern age.

Religion is a powerful factor in state formation and further developing their interactions. Christianity had an old score to settle against Islam for conquering the Holy Land. After its ultimately futile crusades, a working relationship seems to have originated after the fall of Constantinople to Ottomans in 1453. Close on its heels came the Reformation which rent the Christian body politic into Catholics and Protestants. All political equations changed in a few decades. Catholic states under the spiritual – and often temporal too – guidance of the Pope tried their best to score over their Protestant rivals, while the Protestants were not averse to enlist the alliance of the Muslim empires of the Ottoman, Moroccan and Persian to defeat the Pope’s forces. Brotton begins the book in an atmosphere of intrigue and Christian fraternal antagonism, when Queen Elizabeth I receive a letter from Ottoman Sultan Murad III offering to allow English merchants to trade with his country. Charles II of Spain and the Papal interests lay in the middle of both and hence treated as a common enemy. The Protestants equated Islamic aniconism in religious worship to their own iconoclasm that separated them from their Catholic brethren. Similarly, the Ottomans observed a kindred spirit in the Protestants’ fierce opposition against Catholic rituals venerating saints and adoring graven images of Christ and the Madonna. Deriving maximum mileage out of the prevalent perceptions, the English established trading relations with all three major Islamic regimes. The book introduces detailed narratives of how the trade agents faced very heavy odds in foreign lands where they were initially torn between the hostility of ambassadors of European catholic states and the condescending indifference of the sultan. Anglo-Ottoman relations began with the trade concessions obtained by the young adventurer Anthony Jenkinson from Suleyman the Magnificent in 1554. William Harborne consolidated the trading relations under Murad III in 1579. England was driven to the wall when Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 and ordered his supporters to isolate and dethrone her. England orchestrated attacks against the Spanish with active help of Moroccans, who were in turn became so impressed as to let Elizabeth known by the affectionate sobriquet of Sultana Isabel.

England’s increased involvement in Mediterranean politics produced its echo in the cultural context as well. English writers were increasingly attracted to Islamic themes and experimented with a cast of characters which drastically differed from the established canon. Anti-heroes in the guise of Moors (an epithet of Muslims that came to be associated with them in the sense of inhabitants of Morocco) came on the stage with thunderous impact on the masses. Its greatest influence was seen in theatre. It all began with Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine in 1587 and Jew of Malta just three years later. The floodgates of creativity were opened wide with these sensational plays. Of more than sixty plays featuring Turks, Moors and Persians performed in London’s public theaters between 1576 and 1603, forty were staged between 1588 and 1599. More than ten of them acknowledged explicit debts to Tamburlaine. William Shakespeare was another glorious entrant to this branch of drama that enacted plays which transcended established boundaries of morality, religion and ethnicity. While Marlowe emphasized his characters’ relentless will to power, Shakespeare made historic failures into figures of empathy, interest and pathos. This book examines several Shakespearean plays with a critical eye to their historical inspiration. Plays such as Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello have a strong Moorish influence on the storyline. Othello, in fact, was a Moor whose uncertain entry into Venetian aristocracy through his marriage with Desdemona was marred by the intrigues caused by racial hatred personified in the character of Iago. Brotton makes a memorable review of these plays and exposes the defining parameter of its motivation to Mediterranean concerns that caused a stir in contemporary London.

Strangely, the Anglo-Islamic alliance collapsed as swiftly as it began. Elizabeth died in 1603 and within a year, King Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco died of plague and Sultan Mehmed III of Turkey of a heart attack. James I who succeeded Elizabeth wanted to resurrect closer ties with Christian kingdoms, catholic or not. Continental kingdoms supporting the Pope had also learned the hard lesson in trying to humble the English whose might stood unchallenged in the sea. A quick rapprochement between England and Spain made the position of Muslim ambassadors precarious in London. James turned towards the west, to America while the Ottoman sultan turned east, to Persia as the next battleground to expand their empires, creating an uncanny inactivity in the Mediterranean. The sharp polarization on religious lines helped European Christians take a lead over the Near Eastern Muslims with rapid progress in scientific knowledge and giant strides in technology. Muslim culture began its downward slide to stagnancy when they were driven out of the gates of Vienna in 1683. They were never to raise their heads again in Europe for a long, long time. Islamic motifs ceased to inspire English playwrights around the time of Elizabeth’s death. Shakespeare didn’t use Moorish characters after Othello. Brotton paints a closely followed picture of how the curtain fell on Islamic influence and the era of Orientalism began. The book includes a good collection of colour plates depicting portraits and other scenes related to the narrative.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star