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Durham E-Theses English Literature on the Ottoman Turks in the sixtenth and seventeenth centuries Ingram, Anders How to cite: Ingram, Anders (2009) English Literature on the Ottoman Turks in the sixtenth and seventeenth centuries, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1974/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk ENGLISH LITERATURE ON THE OTTOMAN TURKS IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES Anders Ingram Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. University of Durham, Department of History 2009 PhD abstract English literature on the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Anders Ingram University of Durham 2009 In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century a large and complex English literature on the Ottoman Turks developed, characterised by its diversity in form, content, opinion and context. This was a literature in the sense of a large body of texts sharing a topic, written in a similar time and place and in similar context, but also in the sense of a discourse, sharing literary conventions, citing similar sources, recycling information, accepted ‘facts’, anecdotes and images and drawing upon the same authorities. I examine this literature from its sixteenth-century roots, tracing its growth at the turn of the seventeenth century and its development into a complex literature, influenced by English religious and political contexts as well as growing Anglo-Ottoman trade and diplomacy, until the dramatic changes brought by diminishing Ottoman power in Europe at the close of that century. I draw these sources together as a ‘literature’, by examining trends, chronological developments and connections between them, while on the other hand I focus upon the contexts of individual works and a nuanced reading of their representations of the Ottomans. Through this I seek to bring a broader and more balanced perspective on both English literature on the Ottomans as a whole and the diversity and complexity of the works of which it was comprised. CONTENTS Abbreviated titles i Copyright declaration iii Acknowledgements iv INTRODUCTION 1 ‘Europe’ and the contextual frame 13 ‘Orientalism’ 15 The Turkish ‘Other’ 18 Commonplaces of ‘the Turk’ 24 English and continental literatures on the Ottoman Turks 27 Field of study 33 Chapter summary 43 Chapter 1: THE EMERGENCE OF AN ENGLISH LITERATURE ON THE OTTOMANS 49 The 1540s: evangelical printers and chronicle translations 55 The publishing boom of the 1590s 79 The ‘Long War’ and English turcica 91 Chapter 2: RICHARD KNOLLES 113 Background 114 Knolles the historian and his sources 126 Rhetoric, ‘history’ and the Ottomans 141 Tyranny and the Ottoman state 154 Bodin and Knolles 164 Knolles the authority 175 Chapter 3: TRAVEL ACCOUNTS 188 Trade and gentleman travellers 191 Thomas Coryat 194 Fynes Moryson 202 George Sandys: career and reputation 219 The literary character of the Relation (1615) 227 Islam and the Christian polemical tradition 241 Tyranny and the ‘Turkish’ character 249 Sandys the authority 258 Chapter 4: THE LEVANT COMPANY 269 Levant Company chaplains 272 Thomas Smith 281 The Levant trade and continuations of Knolles’ History 293 Edward Grimeston 297 M.B. and Nabbes 307 Paul Rycaut: early career and publications 315 The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1666) 320 Later career and publications 342 The War of the Holy League 1683-99 and The Turkish History (1700) 348 CONCLUSIONS 363 Appendix 1: the ‘terror of the world’ 380 Appendix 2: ‘Saracens’ 386 Appendix 3: The Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 388 Appendix 4: Contents of Knolles’ History by edition 396 Appendix 5: Table of Knolles’ sources as listed in the History 407 BIBLIOGRAPHY 408 Reference Primary Secondary i ABBREVIATED TITLES O.D.N.B. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , (Oxford, 2004); online edn. [http://www.oxforddnb.com]. Arber, Registers (1894) Arber, Edward, and Charles Robert Rivington. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640, A.D . 5 vols. (London, 1894). Bodin, trs. Knolles, Bodin, Jean, and trs. Richard Knolles. The Six Commonweale (1606) Bookes of a Commonweale . (London, 1606: STC 3193). Bodin, trs. Knolles, ed. McRae Bodin, Jean, Richard Knolles, and Kenneth D. Commonweale (1962) McRae. The Six Books of a Commonweale . (Cambridge, 1962). Knolles, History (1603, 1610, 1621, Knolles, Richard. The Generall Historie of the 1631, 1638) Turkes . (London, 1603: STC 15051, 1610: STC 15052, 1621: STC 15053, 1631: STC 15054, 1638: STC 15055). Knolles, History (1687) Knolles, Richard, and Paul Rycaut. The Turkish History . (London, 1687: Wing K702). Rycaut, Present State (1668) Rycaut, Paul. The Present State of the Ottoman Empire. (London, 1668: Wing R2413). Rycaut, Turkish Empire (1680) Rycaut, Paul. The History of the Turkish Empire (London, 1680: Wing R2406 ). Rycaut, Turkish History (1700) Rycaut, Paul. The History of the Turks (London, 1700: Wing R2408). Sandys, Relation (1615) Sandys, George. A Relation of a Iourney Begun An: Dom: 1610 . (London, 1615: STC 21726). STC A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English books printed abroad, 1475-1640 , compiled by A.W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, revised, revised and enlarged by W. A. Jackson, F.S. Ferguson and K.F. Pantzer (3 vols., London, 1986-1991) ii Wing Short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English books printed in other countries, 1641- 1700 , compiled by Donald Wing, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged by John J. Morrison and Carolyn W. Nelson, Timothy J. Crist (4 vols., New York, 1998). ESTC English Short Title Catalogue , (London, 2009); [http://www.estc.bl.uk]. iii I declare that no portion of this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree in this or any other University. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those who have helped me to develop my interest in this topic and produce this thesis. In particular, I wish to thank my supervisor Dr. Christine Woodhead for her patience, guidance and support throughout, and my second supervisor Professor Chris Brooks. I owe further thanks to Rainer Brömer and Dr. Phil Withington for their efforts in supervising the original Undergraduate and Masters dissertations from which this thesis developed. This project would not been possible without the generous support and funding of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), who funded my Ph.D., and the Andrew Mellon foundation, who funded my M.Litt. as a studentship attached to Aberdeen University’s Sawyer Seminar 2003-04. My research has also been greatly assisted by the kind help and expertise of the staff of the special collections of Aberdeen, Durham and Edinburgh university libraries as well as the National Library of Scotland and the British Library. My thanks also go to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for their permission to use the images on p. 49 and p. 234. Finally, I wish to thank my friends and family for their support and understanding during the last few years, in particular thanks to my father for proof-reading my drafts, and to Serena, without whose support and kindness the last year would have been infinitely more difficult and painful. 1 INTRODUCTION THE glorious Empire of the Turkes, the present terrour of the world, hath amongst other things nothing in it more wonderfull or strange, than the poore beginning of itselfe … Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603) 1 THe Turke is admired for nothing more, then his sodaine aduancement to so great an Empire …which is become now a terrour to the whole world. John Speed, A Prospect of the most famous parts of the World (1631) 2 IT is neither agreed on by the best writers, nor well known to the Turks themselves, from whence the Empire of this barbarous Nation, the worlds present terrour, first took its small & obscure beginning. Andrew Moore, A Compendious history of the Turks (1659) 3 The above sentences all introduce seventeenth-century English accounts of the Ottoman Turks. All draw upon the same literary convention, describing the Ottomans as ‘the terrour of the world’. The first opens Knolles’ voluminous History , the first major 1 Knolles, History (1603), p. 1. 2 John Speed, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (London, 1631: Wing S4882A), p. 35. 3 Andrew Moore, A Compendious History of the Turks (London, 1660: M2530), p. 1. 2 original English account of the Ottomans. The second introduces a brief two-page description of ‘the Turkish Empire’ in Speed’s Prospect , an atlas containing various maps with potted geographical and historical descriptions on the reverse. The last begins the main text of Moore’s Compendious History , a book largely cribbed from Knolles’ earlier work. 4 While Speed and Moore’s use of this expression was directly drawn from Knolles, virtually repeating his sentence, by the mid-seventeenth century this phrase was in common usage.