The Women of the Early Modern Turk and Moor Plays A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Lamiya Mohamed Almas IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY John Watkins August 2009 © Lamiya M Almas 2009 i Acknowledgements No Ph.D. student has ever gone through such an exciting experience and completed such an arduous task alone. I am no exception. I have been supported, influenced and inspired by many whom I would like to acknowledge. First and foremost, this dissertation was made possible with the help and guidance from Allah the most Gracious the most Merciful. I am speechless in expressing enough gratitude to Allah for His profound generosity in all aspects that made it all possible. I would also like to give credit and thanks to those teachers, friends and family members who have supported me and this project for the past several years. I am among the fortunate students to have had John Watkins as my adviser. John is extraordinarily devoted to his students. I would like to thank him for his unwavering belief in my work, his constant encouragement and enthusiastic insights on my drafts that facilitated and stimulated the process of completing this dissertation. The candor with which he has always interceded for my interest as a graduate student in the English Department is something I will always remember about him. I simply cannot thank him enough. Early in my graduate career, I was deeply influenced by the work of the foremost scholar on Islam in early modern England, Nabil Matar, who later on became my greatest mentor. To him I owe much. He does not know it, but reading his masterpiece Islam in Britain was a turning point in my graduate career. It opened up endless possibilities in a field I saw close to my heart. I am very fortunate to have worked with him as a young scholar, and very fortunate to have had him on my dissertation committee. I would like to thank him for his exceptional generosity with his expertise, for his perceptive wisdom on a mountain of drafts, and for his brilliance, enthusiasm and support. I would also like to thank my committee members Donald Ross and Edward Griffin who have assisted me immensely. Donald Ross’s frequent emails the he called “nag-o-grams” kept me focused on writing and completing the dissertation. I want to ii especially thank Edward Griffin for agreeing to be on my committee at short notice, and for his insightful feedback on the dissertation. I express my heartfelt gratitude to my parents, Mohamed and Hasna, for all their sacrifices for me to be the very first PhD holder in both my immediate and extended family. Thank you for believing in me, and instilling confidence in me. Thank you for celebrating my successes and supporting me in all my decisions. You have taught me more than you can ever imagine. Thank you for your constant prayers and thoughts. I also would like to thank my siblings Arwa, Mueen and Liza for enduring me being away from them for so long and missing out on their successes in life, and for their unwavering support and encouragement. There was a never a moment that I did not feel they were with me in their thoughts and prayers. I would also like thank my best friend Aqbal for her solid belief in me and my capabilities. Thank you for reminding me of my priorities in life, and striving to show me that life is about balance. I wish you would know how much I cherish the times that you have been with me, whether in person or over the phone listening attentively to my every word and always knowing what to say at the right time. Thank you for always making me feel special. Aqbal you are indeed my other self. Lastly, I thank my husband, Khaled. I appreciate his relentless efforts to make the whole dissertation process as comfortable as possible. His merry spirit made the frequent late night trips to the library so enjoyable. He knew how to lighten up my life with his laughter and how to help me keep things in perspective. He reminded me of the important things in life. Thank you for respecting the times when I simply had to work. You never cease to amaze me. I am so happy to have found you and kept you in my life. For these and a million more, I also dedicate this dissertation to you. iii For my parents, Mohamed and Hasna and my husband, Khaled iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Dedication iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 11 Overshadowed by Elizabeth Chapter 2 54 Lust is a Definite Must Chapter 3 86 The Conversion of Turkish Harem Women Chapter 4 117 Roxolana, the most Popular Concubine on the English Stage Conclusion 152 Works Cited 158 1 Introduction Oh, were you of our faith, I’d swear great Mullisheg To be a god on earth. ---Thomas Heywood, The Fair Maid of the West (P2.5.2.118-119) Diplomacy makes strange bed-fellows. As the Virgin Queen took the helm of England’s domestic and foreign policy, her encounter with the infidel was inevitable and unavoidable. The infidel Saracen of Medieval times is now reincarnated in the form of the Turk and Moor, and the sheer hostility was replaced with a sense of ambivalence towards them, a love-hate relationship that welcomed a political and military union against a hostile Spain: . the English attitude toward the Ottoman threat was not simply and universally one of fear and loathing. As long as the Turkish expansion was at the expense of Roman Catholic power, it was not, from the Protestant point of view, an altogether negative phenomenon. The Turks were often seen by the Protestants as a scourge sent by God to punish Roman papal pride, and some Protestant writers expressed a hope that the rival powers of pope and sultan would annihilate each other, leaving a power vacuum that might be filled by an expansion of Protestant Reformation. 1 And, in matters of religion, there was always room for negotiations to find common ground. Indeed, it was rumored that Elizabeth “made advances to the Porte 2 on the ground that she and the Great Turk were alike enemies of idolaters.” 3 That their queen was declaring to be “semi-Musselman,” to use Barton’s expression, may not have sat well with either her subjects or her enemies, but it certainly did with the Turks: To such an extent were the Turks persuaded of the similarity between Protestantism and Islam that if we are to believe a contemporary report, addressed to the emperor, Sinan Pacha told the Roman ambassador that 1 Daniel J Vitkus, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia UP, 2000)7; see also Kenneth M Setton, “Lutheranism and the Turkish Peril,” Balkan Studies 3.1 (1962): 151. 2 Also known as “Sublime Porte,” which was a name for the Ottoman court; it was in reference to the high palace gate at which justice was administered. 3 Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance (New York: Oxford UP, 1937) 104. 2 to be good Mussulmans all that was wanting to the English was that they should raise a finger and pronounce the Eshed or confession of faith. 4 Elizabeth, like many leaders of many nascent European empires at the time, was involved in “. negotiation, compromise, ingenuity, diplomacy, bargaining, and ingratiating ambassadors (often bearing comically unwieldy gifts as tribute),” 5 to survive and flourish in the midst of a raging and expansionist Ottoman Empire. 6 She had solicited Ottoman favor by presenting Sultan Mahomet III with an elaborate organ 7 and by sending a letter to Sultan Murad III arguing the benefit of good “so that by mutual traffique, the East may be joined and knit with the West.” 8 Her military involvement in the crisis in Barbary was also a hot topic, as was her welcoming and accommodating the Moroccan ambassador to London in 1600. Less mentioned correspondences with the Ottomans were those between Elizabeth and the Sultan Valide, the Venetian Safiye. Barton claims that “Elizabeth herself assisted to maintain a good understanding by entering into a correspondence with the Sultan Valide.” 9 No opportunity for diplomacy was to be wasted. The nature of the correspondence between the two women may be discerned through the translation of a letter from Safiye to Elizabeth: 4 Edward Barton, and Edwin Pears, “The Spanish Armada and the Ottoman Porte,” The English Historical Review 8.31 (1893) 439-466. 5Mohja Kahf, Western Representation of Muslim Women: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: U of Texas P, 1999) 57. 6 There was no question that the Islamic Empire of the Ottomans, the Barbary state of North Africa, and the Moghuls in India were powerful states of varying degrees, and England found itself, like the rest of Europe, forced to acknowledge their sovereignty and integrity. For Moghuls on the English stage in 1676, see John Dryden, Aurengzebe ed. Frederick M. Link (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1993) 7 Thomas Dallam, John Covel, and James Theodore Bent, “The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam” Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant Ed. J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A., F.R.G.S. (London, 1893) 4-6.Thomas Dallam, a herald of Queen Elizabeth, wrote a diary of more than one hundred pages during his one-year journey in the East, in which he mentions carrying a letter and an organ (a gift from the Queen) to Sultan Mahomet III .