The Sultan and the Queen by Jerry Bolton

 The Sultan and the Queen by Jerry Bolton

England’s forgotten dalliance with Islam

Have you read Shakespeare’s plays? And if you have, have you wondered at the number of plays which include a character dark of skin, shady of origin, duplicitous in character, and described as a ‘moor’? The quaint word referred to a person of Turkish or Moroccan origin, and in later years was used to describe any North African, and within the Indian context any person of the Muslim faith. Why did plays written in Elizabethan England, meant for an English audience contain a Moorish character- often in a minor but pivotal role?

Elizabethan England was divided by the violent fissures between its minority Catholic, and majority Protestant populations (see Faith and Treason by Antonia Fraser). Even as Elizabeth put down the Catholics, and in particular the Jesuits with vengeance, the Pope excommunicated her. The catholic countries of Europe not only waged war against England, but more effectively brought all trade with England to a halt- in what in contemporary parlance would pass for an economic blockade. With no choice left, England, in those days a small ‘oriental’ island, was forced to send embassies to the Ottoman Sultan (Suleyman the Magnificent, and later Murad III), and the King of Morocco. Elizabeth was particularly short of salt petre to manufacture gun powder, and this commodity was sourced from Morocco. Private trade always existed long before Elizabeth’s attempts to formalize it, and these trade relations brought Moors to England- as Ambassadors, traders, adventurers, and travelers. It is amusing to read how both Catholic Europe and Protestant England, wooed the Moors, while being at loggerheads with each other. So deeply were the co-religionists divided, that each party of this divide imagined a closer theological proximity towards Islam, than to each other. Protestants were impressed by the Islamic hatred for idolatory, while Catholics saw a lot in common between some of their Saints and Islamic heroes who had made similar conquests. All such theological contortions were simply a mechanism to justify trade relations. With typical British duplicity, England managed to cultivate trade interests with both Shia Persia and Sunni Ottomans, who were themselves on the opposite sides of a divide as deep as the one between Catholics and Protestants. As Brotton writes (page 71):

“There is a long, undistinguished history of states, whatever their religious or ideological beliefs, being economical with the truth when it comes to selling arms to apparent adversaries, and the Elizabethans were no different.”

Brotton’s observations about the illegitimate arms trade between Elizabethan England and Morocco can be generalized to trade in other goods as well. Is it any wonder then, that Elizabeth’s portraits show her sporting veils of diaphanous silk and oriental chintz, than English broadcloth? It is an entirely different matter that King James I who succeeded Elizabeth, by deft diplomacy reestablished England’s connections with Catholic Europe, while pushing trade further East towards India, thereby giving a quiet burial to England’s Moorish connections. Fans of popular history should thank Brotton for resurrecting the story of England’s forgotten dalliance with Islamic empires.