The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam
Tom Verde
Jerry Brotton
2016, Viking, 978-0-241-00402-9, $28 hb. (Published in the UK as This Orient Isle.)
In 1570, with Catholic Spain and Rome breathing down her Protestant neck, Britain’s Elizabeth I turned to her enemies’ enemies, Morocco and Ottoman Turkey. The treaties and trade agreements she struck with these sultanates infuriated her Continental rivals while enriching Tudor England with “exotic commodities from Islamic lands that included cotton, rhubarb, currants ... and intricate textiles, as well as the Moroccan sugar” that Elizabeth consumed “in such copious quantities” it blackened her teeth, writes historian Jerry Brotton. As “Sultana Isabel” (her Moroccan title) dispatched envoys to major Muslim capitals, “Tudor fascination with the Islamic world” infused domestic English culture with clothing and carpets “after the Turkish fashion” and influenced the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare (e.g. Othello), among others.
You may also be interested in...
The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History—Our Book Review
The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History shows how the 13th-century Andalusi palace complex in Granada, modern Spain, generates often conflicting meanings at the same time—meanings actively constructed and sometimes misread. Edhem Eldem, an Istanbul-based history professor, traces its role in shaping social and cultural identities across imperial Europe, Arab North Africa and Ottoman Türkiye from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.
Anthology Shows Soccer—and Sport—as Our Favorite Muse—Book Review
In Picturing the Beautiful Game, art historian Daniel Haxall shows readers the perspective of the artist’s psyche—one rarely depicted in discussions of sport.