A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details From Cyrus to Abbas: Staging Persia in Early Modern England Hafiz Abid Masood D Phil Early Modern Literature and Culture University of Sussex March 2011 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or part to another University in whole or part for the award of any other degree. List of Abbreviations CSP Venice Calendar of State Papers…Relating to English Affairs…in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. R. Brown, London 1864 L & P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign Henry VIII, 21 Vols. London, 1864-1910 CSP Foreign Elizabeth Calendar of State Papers Foreign Series of the Reign of Elizabeth ed. Arthur John Butler et.al. London 1880-1936 The abbreviations are followed by volume number and page number respectively. Acknowledgements It is my pleasant duty to thank my supervisor Dr Matthew Dimmock, whose perceptive remarks have significantly improved the quality of this thesis. He has been a constant source of inspiration for me throughout my stay at Sussex to accomplish this project almost within the stipulated time. Thank you once again. Similarly, I owe a debt to a number of people in Pakistan, both my teachers at Government College University, Lahore, where I completed my M Phil and International Islamic University, Islamabad where I learnt the interdisciplinarity that led me to become interested in Anglo-Islamic relations. At the former institution, I would especially like to mention Professor Waseem Anwar, Dr Farhan Ebadat Yar Khan and Professor Nausheen Khan who all supported me in my academic endeavours. At IIUI, I can’t express my gratitude enough for Professor Zafar Ishaq Ansari, Director, Islamic Research Institute, who encouraged me to follow the line that eventually brought me to University of Sussex. Like so many young people from the developing world, I have benefited immensely from the ‘blessings’ of information technology being able to connect with a number of people around the world. I was lucky enough to have known Professor Nabil Matar’s work in my undergrad days and later get in touch with him via email. I would like to thank him for his kindness to me over these years. Professor Bernadette Andrea also deserves my sincere gratitude for being really kind to me and I have learnt a lot from her work on Persia. My D Phil would have been a dream without the funding from Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. I would like to thank Professor Ataur Rehman, the then Chairman of HEC whose role in reforming Pakistan’s higher education will always be remembered. I would also like to thank the current Chairman of HEC, Dr Javed Leghari, who has done a commendable job by leading the HEC in difficult financial circumstances with great success. Finally, I am grateful to my Project Director, Rana Shafiq Ahmad, Project Managers, Nadeem Javed and Madiha Butt as well as Mr Dara Shikoh who have performed their job excellently, as far as I can tell. Last but not the least, my family, both here and in Pakistan, has been a great source of joy and comfort. The prayers and good wishes of my parents have always accompanied me wherever I go. I thank them for that. Samina, Salman and Zainab have never let me feel that I am abroad. Thanks Samina for making Park Village a home away from home. Salamn and Zainab, smiling, take whole day’s fatigue away. Thanks Salman!! Thanks Zainab!! University of Sussex Hafiz Abid Masood, D. Phil Early Modern Literature and Culture From Cyrus to Abbas: Staging Persia in Early Modern England Summary This thesis considers the different ways Persia was perceived in early modern England. Persia, understudied in recent scholarship, played an important role in the early modern English imagination, both as a classical civilization and as a counterweight to the Ottoman threat to Christendom. This classical heritage and anti-Ottomanism, when intersected with a Persian Muslim identity, resulted in a complex phenomenon. This thesis is an attempt to understand the various cross currents that constructed this complex image. Chapter One discusses English interest in classical Persian themes in the wake of Renaissance humanism. It focuses on three classical ‘Persian’ plays featuring Achaemenid Kings; Cambyses, Darius and Cyrus, and investigates how classical Persia became a focus of interest for Elizabethan playwrights. Chapter Two moves to the wars between the Ottomans and Safavids and how they fascinated many English writers of the time. Paying specific attention to Usumcasane in Marlowe’s Tambulaine plays, the chapter suggests the significance of Persian references in the play and offers a new interpretation of the notorious Qur’an burning scene. Chapter Three analyses John Thomas Minadoi’s Historie of Warres betweene the Turkes and the Persians and shows the significance of Christian knowledge of schism in Islam for Catholic-Protestant debates. Chapter Four concentrates on the representation of Persia in Romance texts from late Elizabethan England and shows that despite being hailed as an anti-Ottoman power, Persia’s anti-Christian Islamic identity, which was also suggested by Minadoi, becomes manifest in the alliance of ‘Sultan’ and ‘Sophy’ against the Crusaders. Chapter Five combines two crucial moments in Anglo- Persian encounters: Jenkinson’s trading mission and the ‘travailes” of the Sherley brothers. Through an analysis of the play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, the argument of the chapter is that it represents the cumulative experience of Englishmen in Persia in the early modern period. Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 The ‘sworne enemie to the Turk’: Differentiating ‘Turks’ and Persians in Elizabethan England ................................................................................................................................ 55 Complicating ‘Turks’ and the Persians: John Thomas Minadoi’s Historie of Warres betweene the Turkes and the Persians ................................................................................. 84 ‘Great Sherley’s Church’: Travel, Drama and Anglo-Persian Encounters in the Early Modern Period .................................................................................................................... 147 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 180 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 192 Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 207 1 Introduction The phenomenal rise in studies of the representation of Islam and Muslims in early modern English literature in the last decade has mainly focussed on the Ottoman Turks and African Moors as is demonstrated in a recent bibliography (Masood, 2005). The central position of Ottomans and Africans in such studies can be explained with reference to their presence as central figures in two of the most canonical of English dramatists, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, in particular in Tamburlaine I and II and Othello. Turks and Moors, however, were not the only Muslim communities that Englishmen came across in the early modern period. The two other important Muslim empires were the Mughals and the Safavid Persians. Mughal India has been paid some attention in early modern east-west relations by scholars like Jyotsna Singh, Pompa Banerjee and Richmond Barbour among others (Singh, 1996; Banerjee, 2003; Barbour, 2003). These studies, however, are not concerned with how the English interaction with the Mughal Empire brought about a change in attitudes towards Islam in Early Modern England. Safavid Persia, then is the territory that has been largely ignored by recent scholarship working on early modern Anglo-Islamic relations with the result that our understanding of English perceptions of Islam and Muslims in the early modern period today is based on Anglo-Ottoman or Anglo- African contacts and is consequently partial. This thesis aims at broadening this understanding by closely studying the representation of Persia in early modern English writings. In January 1540 Sir Thomas Wyatt was in France as Henry VIII’s ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The purpose of his visit was to persuade the Emperor to hand over one of the English rebels in his royal train as required by the treaties between the Holy Roman Empire and England. After meeting the Emperor, Wyatt sent a despatch to Henry VIII which describes what transpired in that meeting: Had access to his Majesty, along with Tate, on Twelfth Even after dinner, who after reading the king’s letters and reading credence, asked who the rebel was. Said,