Queen and Sultan: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World
About This Novel
In 1570, Queen Elizabeth I of England was excommunicated by the Pope. In order to get rid of being surrounded by mainland Catholic countries, England started a period of alliance with the Islamic forces fighting in the Mediterranean and Catholic Spain, and had in-depth cultural, economic and political exchanges with the Islamic world. It was a remarkable period, with England signing treaties with the Ottoman Empire, accepting ambassadors from the King of Morocco, and sending arms to Marrakech. By the late 1680s, hundreds of merchants, diplomats, sailors, craftsmen, and privateer captains were regularly traveling from Morocco to Persia. Among them was the resourceful merchant Anthony Jenkinson, who met Suleiman the Magnificent and Shah Tahmasp of Persia in the 1560s. The Norfolk merchant William Haban became the first ambassador to the Ottoman court in 1582, while the adventurer Antoninus Sherry remained at the court of Shah Abbas the Great for much of the 1600s. The news these people brought back about the Islamic world was of great interest to the British and was expressed in many great literary works, such as Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and The Merchant of Venice. The creation of "Othello" is probably related to the visit of the Moroccan ambassador Anouli to Britain. This book demonstrates the extensive, often friendly, connections between Elizabethan England and the Islamic world. In today's era of globalization, this history of exchanges between heterogeneous cultures can still bring us great inspiration.
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