The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  Scholarly endeavor was aided by political disengagement. The long, slow decline of the Ottoman Empire and its withdrawal from western Europe’s borders from the end of the seventeenth century enabled European scholars to re-create the “Orient” anew. It became an exotic, sensuous world that was regarded as despotic and backward, where Europeans needed to impose order, rationality and enlightenment (though only on their own terms). The orient isle of Elizabethan England, for so long almost a confederate of the Islamic world, became an island of orientalism, as one set of myths and misconceptions of Islam gave way to another. Over time, England’s early relations with Islam were quietly forgotten as the grander, more memorable fables of imperialism and orientalism prevailed. But that is part of another era’s history.

  The story told in this book is one of a largely unknown connection between England and the Islamic world, one that emerged out of a very specific set of circumstances during the European Reformation. English history still tends to view the Elizabethan period as defined by the timeless rhythms of agrarian Anglo-Saxon traditions, ethnically pure and exclusively white. But, as I hope this book has shown, there are other aspects to this island’s national story that involve other cultures, and in the Elizabethan period one of them was Islam. To occlude the role Islam played in this past only diminishes its history. Now, when much is made of the “clash of civilizations” between Islam and Christianity, seems to me a good time to remember that the connections between the two faiths are much deeper and more entangled than many contemporary commentators seem to appreciate, and that in the sixteenth century Islamic empires like those of the Ottomans far surpassed the power and influence of a small and relatively insignificant state like Elizabethan England in their military power, political organization and commercial reach. It turns out that Islam in all its manifestations—imperial, military and commercial—is part of the British national story.

  One way of encouraging tolerance and inclusiveness at a time when both are in short supply is to show both Muslim and Christian communities how, more than four centuries ago, absolute theological belief often yielded to strategic considerations, political pressures and mercantile interests. In a period of volatile and shifting political and religious allegiances, Muslims and Christians were forced to find a common language of messy and uneasy coexistence. Despite the sometimes intemperate religious rhetoric, the conflict between Christian Europe and the Islamic world was then, as now, defined as much by the struggle for power and precedence as by theology.

  Today Britain is a multicultural society, with a significant community of Muslim believers, as is the United States, a country whose mores and institutions would come to be formed in its image. Developments over the past half century, intensified by recent events, have forced us to confront once more the question of Britain’s relation with Islam, although they are very different from those experienced by the Elizabethans, when mass migration was almost nonexistent.

  The impetus toward cultural integration that (mostly) followed the mass immigration of various communities into Britain as its empire collapsed in the mid-twentieth century, including Muslim communities from South Asia, is now being questioned as politicians and the media of various persuasions accuse British Muslims of failure to assimilate into the national culture. Born in Bradford in the north of England in the late 1960s, I went to school in nearby Leeds with Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and we hardly ever spoke about religious belief and sectarian divisions as we played and learned together. It was not a multicultural idyll, but neither was our world defined by theological absolutes. This was my experience of Englishness, and I realize now that it partly explains why I wrote this book. If what I have written makes a small contribution to understanding the long and often difficult history of connections between Islam and the West, then it will have been worth the while.

  Muhammad al-Annuri, the Moroccan ambassador who arrived in London in August 1600 with a large delegation to propose an Anglo-Moroccan alliance and twice met the queen. Shakespeare started to write Othello around six months later.

  Willem de Pannemaker’s tapestry showing Catholic Habsburg forces triumphantly sacking Tunis in 1535. These scenes of slaughter and enslavement were first displayed in London following Mary Tudor’s marriage to Philip of Spain in 1554.

  A double portrait of Philip of Spain and Mary Tudor painted in 1558. It shows Philip ruling England alongside Mary, who died in November that same year.

  The “Rainbow Portrait” of Elizabeth I, c. 1600. The jewels and fabrics are all recognizably oriental, a reminder of the extensive Anglo-Islamic trade.

  Diogo Homem’s map of the Mediterranean from the Queen Mary Atlas (1558), showing Ottoman flags flying over North Africa.

  The idealistic but naive king Sebastian I of Portugal, whose defeat and death (alongside two rival Moroccan rulers) at the battle of Alcácer-Quibir in 1578 sent shock waves throughout Europe.

  A view of Marrakesh, the capital city of the Sa’adian dynasty, from a seventeenth-century engraving by the Dutch artist Adriaen Matham.

  Hans Eworth’s 1549 portrait of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent on horseback, one of many pictures of Islamic rulers owned by the Elizabethan elite.

  Sultan Selim II, surrounded by his army, receiving homages after the death of his father, Sultan Süleyman, in 1566.

  Samson Rowlie, a Norfolk merchant captured by the Turks in 1577. As the Latin inscription states, he was castrated, converted to Islam, and was renamed Hassan Aga; he then became chief eunuch and treasurer of Algiers.

  A needlework hanging showing a personification of Faith—looking remarkably like Queen Elizabeth—and Muhammad, commissioned by Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, at the height of the Anglo-Ottoman accord.

  A portrait of Sultan Murad III from an Ottoman album of 1588–1589. Murad and Queen Elizabeth corresponded about politics and commerce for more than two decades and established an unprecedented alliance. When Ottoman forces were confronting Spain and challenging the Holy Roman Empire, Elizabeth’s merchants were supplying them with guns.

  A copy of a letter from Sultan Murad III to Queen Elizabeth dated June 20, 1590, in praise of the queen, with the Ottoman calligraphic monogram at the top.

  Nicholas Hilliard’s Heneage Jewel, c. 1595, made of gold, diamonds, crystal, and rubies. Elizabeth sent jeweled portraits like this to the Ottoman court in the 1590s.

  Sir Anthony Sherley and his rival ambassador, the Persian cavalryman Husain Ali Beg Bayat, engraved by Aegidius Sadeler during their joint embassy to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague in 1600 to propose a Euro-Persian alliance. The two men quarreled violently before Ali Beg finally abandoned Sir Anthony and returned to Persia.

  Sir Robert Sherley and his wife, Teresa, painted in an opulent oriental style by Sir Anthony Van Dyck during Sherley’s embassy to Rome in 1622. The daughter of a Circassian chieftain, Teresa was baptized into the Catholic faith.

  The Persian shah Abbas I, Safavid ruler of Iran, from a seventeenth-century Mughal painting. Falconry was one of his passions, shared by his friend Sir Anthony Sherley.

  Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, in the early seventeenth century. The skyline is dominated by minarets, characteristic of the Ottoman architecture that redefined the Byzantine city after it fell to Mehmed II in 1453.

  A conference at Somerset House in 1604 brought about reconciliation with Spain and marked the end of Elizabethan engagement with Islam. The English delegates are on the right, the Spanish and Flemish on the left; on the table between them is an Ottoman rug.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing acknowledgments brings with it the realization that the origins of a book often go back much further than its author has appreciated. In my case they reach all the way to my inspirational English teacher in secondary school, Maggie Sheen, who first interested me in Shakespeare. She started me on a path that eventually led to this book, and to another important figure in my life,
my great mentor, collaborator and friend Lisa Jardine. In the 1990s Lisa and I worked together on exchanges between western and eastern cultures in the Renaissance. Lisa’s untimely death in the autumn of 2015 robbed Britain of one of its great public intellectuals, and it left me bereft of a dear friend and confidante who made me believe anything was possible. I wish she were still with us for many reasons, not least to see the publication of a book that, like its subject, is haunted by her absent presence.

  Family and friends provided practical support, shrewd guidance and less tangible but equally crucial care and encouragement as I tussled with this book. For that I would like to thank Peter Barber, Jonathan Burton, Miles and Ranj Carter, Rebecca Chamberlain, Nick Crane, Kath Diamond, Simon Curtis, Dave and Sarah Griffiths, Lucy Hannington and Bence Hegedus, Helen Leblique, Ita MacCarthy, Nabil Matar, Nick Millea, Patricia Parker, Richard Scholar, Vik Sivalingam, Guy Richards Smit, Tim Supple, Ben and Katherine Turney, Dave and Emily Vest and Dan Vitkus. Emma and James Lambe provided their characteristically unwavering calm and unhesitating domestic help. Alexander Samson kindly shared unpublished research with me, Mia Hewitt and Alice Agossini helped translate documents from the Spanish, Ton Hoenselaars read related articles and encouraged me to continue writing when I thought the project had defeated me, as did my dear old friend Maurizio Calbi. I am grateful to Patrick Spottiswoode, director of education at the Globe Theatre, for inviting me to hold the International Shakespeare Globe Fellowship in 2004 on the topic “Shakespeare and Islam,” which allowed me to develop some of this book’s ideas; to William Dalrymple, for allowing me a memorable opportunity to present the work in Jaipur; and to Peter Florence, who generously allows me to say and do marvelous things at his remarkable festivals in Hay and beyond. My agent, Peter Straus, has supported me tirelessly for a decade now, and I’m glad to have him by my side. At Viking, I wish to thank Joy De Menil for her tireless and exacting editorial work, as well as the rest of her team, especially Benjamin Sandman, Haley Swanson and Bruce Giffords. Once again Cecilia Mackay proved herself to be the best picture researcher in the business.

  Every book I have ever written has celebrated the unique environment provided by Queen Mary University of London, where I have studied and worked for over twenty years. A dedicated team of people within the School of English and Drama make my working environment a real pleasure, and for that I want to thank Faisal Abul, Jonathan Boffey, Richard Coulton, Rob Ellis, Jenny Gault, Patricia Hamilton, Suzi Lewis, Huw Marsh, Matthew Mauger, Kate Russell and Bev Stewart. I am also proud to be an associate of the People’s Palace Projects at Queen Mary, led by the inspirational Paul Heritage, and thank him and his team, especially Rosie Hunter and Thiago Jesus, for allowing me to work with them in Brazil on Shakespeare and many other exciting initiatives. Among my departmental colleagues I am lucky enough to have the support and friendship of Ruth Ahnert, John Barrell (who goes back even further), Michèle Barrett, Julia Boffey, Mark Currie, Markman Ellis, Katie Fleming, Paul Hamilton, Alfred Hiatt, Pete Mitchell, Claire Preston, Kirsty Rolfe, Morag Shiach, Bill Schwarz and Andrew van der Vlies. Acting as associate director on my old friend David Schalkwyk’s Global Shakespeare project has also given me fantastic opportunities to explore Shakespeare beyond this sceptered isle. It would embarrass David Colclough were I to tell him how much I cherish our enduring friendship, so I will stop here. I seem to have a weakness for Miltonists, because Joad Raymond has become a great friend since his arrival at Queen Mary, and I hope our alliance will generate more than one Penguin.

  Several people were kind enough to read the whole manuscript and pointed out various omissions and infelicities. Matthew Dimmock and Gerald “Mac” MacLean gave me the benefit of their unrivaled expertise in the field, while the masterly Timothy Brook and his wife, Fay, offered sage advice on tone and structure. I am extremely grateful to them for taking time out of their busy schedules: friends indeed. Adam Lowe watched it all unfold from far away but is always near at hand, and I am very lucky to have him. My father, Alan Brotton, has not read the book, nor should he: all he needs to know is the love and admiration I feel for him sticking by me long enough for us to understand how much we care for each other.

  The book is dedicated to my wife, Charlotte, not to settle a debt, but to honor a meeting of minds. A distinguished Shakespeare scholar in her own right, she read and commented on every line of this book, improving it immeasurably while also writing her own, bringing our daughter, Honey, into the world, and holding everyone in our family together with an effortlessness born of supreme endeavor. She will understand if I leave it to Shakespeare to tell her that my bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to her, the more I have, for both are infinite.

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  APC Acts of the Privy Council

  Castries Henri de Castries et al., eds., Sources inédites pour l’histoire du Maroc, 26 vols. (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1905–1965)

  CP Cecil Papers at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, UK

  CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic

  CSPF Calendar of State Papers, Foreign

  CSPS Calendar of State Papers, Spain

  CSPV Calendar of State Paper, Venice

  Hakluyt Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 7 vols. (London: Everyman’s Library/J. M. Dent, 1907)

  LP Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII

  ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

  OED Oxford English Dictionary Online

  TNA The National Archives of the United Kingdom

  All the official government records and reference books listed above are available online. All references to Shakespeare’s plays (with the exception of Othello) are taken from Stephen Greenblatt et al., eds., The Norton Shakespeare (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

  Introduction

  1. Quoted in Susan A. Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578–1582: A Documentary Study of the First Anglo-Ottoman Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 69.

  2. Quoted in ibid., pp. 69–70.

  3. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (London: John Murray, 2005), pp. 164–78.

  4. Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  5. Skilliter, William Harborne, p. 37.

  6. Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle: Containing the History of England during the reign of Henry the Fourth, and the succeeding Monarchs, to the end of the reign of Henry the Eighth (London: British Museum, 1809), p. 513.

  7. Miriam Jacobson, Barbarous Antiquity: Reorienting the Past in the Poetry of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), pp. 2–4.

  8. See “Muslim, n. and adj.” OED.

  9. See “Islam, n.” OED.

  10. Richard Knolles, The General Historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that Nation to the rising of the Othoman Familie (London, 1603), sig. B47.

  11. Othello, 1.1.135. This and all subsequent references to the play are taken from E. A. J. Honigmann, ed., Othello (Walton-on-Thames: Arden/Thomas Nelson, 1997).

  12. Ibid., 1.3.140.

  13. Ibid., 1.3.133–34.

  14. John Ayre, ed., The Early Works of Thomas Becon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), p. 239.

  15. Quoted in Noel Malcolm, “Positive Views of Islam and of Ottoman Rule in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Jean Bodin,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, ed. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 197–220; at p. 212.

  Chapter 1: Conquering Tunis

  1. CSPS, vol. 13, 1554–1558, no. 60, p. 49.

  2. John Elder, “The Copy of a Letter Sent into Scotland, of the Arrival and Landing, and Most Notable Marriage of the Most Illustrious Pr
ince, Philip of Spain,” in The Chronicle of Queen Jane, ed. J. G. Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1850), appendix x, pp. 139–40.