The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam by Jerry Brotton

The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam Reviews

• 
  Jason Koivu

  If you hadn't heard, America and the Islamic world haven't been getting along too well lately. Whenever something like that happens it makes me want to learn more about "the other side," whatever that may entail. So, with that in mind, I recently read The Sultan and the Queen.
  
  I was quite unaware of the connection between Elizabethan England and Islam. I suppose if I were English, reading Jerry Brotton's book would feel like opening a door to a backyard you didn't know existed.
  
  The setting is this: Queen Elizabeth has followed in her father, King Henry VIII's footsteps, pushing on with the Protestant thing, much to the chagrin of Catholic Europe. This means that round about the mid to late 16th century England didn't have many European friends. In an effort to increase trade and stockpile allies, QE1 sent off envoys to the Mediterranean from Turkey to Morocco in search of new pals. Well, honestly, she just wanted a someone with a bit of money and power to stick a thumb in Spain's eye, so that the impending Spanish invasion of England might fail.
  
  Fail it did, but mostly for other reasons. The Ottoman Empire was reluctant to enter into any agreements with a small, weak nation essentially on the other side of the world. Morocco was generally down with it though, and that might've hampered Spain's domination somewhat.
  
  Anywho, you get plenty of this sort of thing and many other "fun" facts in The Sultan and the Queen. My sarcastic quotes there are because this is a texty history book about trade relations. That's only going to appeal to a certain kind of reader. I mean, I enjoyed it...at least to a certain extent. It did drag on at times and so I found myself putting it down and moving on to other things all too readily.
  
  I also found Brotton's tendency to linger on Shakespeare and Marlow's plays with Moors as the subject to be distracting and unnecessary. Yes, I'm sure historians are a bit pressed for examples of English/Ottoman relations and interactions, so relying on fiction of the period must be tempting, but it goes on too long, well beyond its usefulness. Time and again Brotton dives into the dissection of plays to the point where you wonder if that wasn't the book he really wanted to write.
  
  It's all good reading, mind you. The writing is solid. It's just that the topic, and/or manipulation of the topic, is occasionally tedious. In the end, any boredom I felt in that regards is my own damn fault. I knew what I was getting myself in for. Hell, it's all right there in the title! So read that title and if it sounds good to you, then I highly recommend this!
  
  
  Side Note: This book clears up that whole fallacy about Shakespeare and whether he wrote Othello among other things, because "how would an Englishman who never visited the Middle East know all those details about them?!" Well, he didn't need to visit such foreign lands. The foreigners came to him. Diplomats, especially from Morocco, were in London in the years prior to him (and Marlowe) writing such works.
  
  
  I received this from Viking, but I don't accept freebie books from anyone unless they're aware that I'll give it an unbiased, honest review.
• 
  Bettie

  
  
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074w30m
  
  Description: Professor Jerry Brotton, one of the UK's leading experts on cultural exchange, examines Queen Elizabeth I's fascination with the Orient. He shows that England's relations with the Muslim world were far more extensive, and often more amicable, than we have ever appreciated, and that their influence was felt across the political, commercial and domestic landscape of Elizabethan England.
  
  Derek Jacobi reads the captivating account of how Britain sent ships, treaties and gifts to the royal families of Morocco and Turkey, including a gold carriage and a full-size pipe organ.
  
  1/5: discover the origins of our taste for Oriental imports - including the sugar which rotted the teeth of our sovereign.
  
  2/5: A merchant voyage ends in tragedy when the crew is captured
  
  3/5: the sights and sounds of a royal pageant held in Whitehall in the year 1600 for the Moroccan ambassador.
  
  4/5: Queen Elizabeth I's advisers debate how to satisfy yet again the sultan of Turkey's demands for elaborate royal presents.
  
  5/5: we visit the London stage to discover the Elizabethan fascination with the little-known world of Islam, particularly by Shakespeare and Marlowe.
• 
  Domhnall

  Through the long reign of Elizabeth I, Protestant England was isolated in Europe and needed economic and military help to survive the powerful enmity of Catholic Europe - especially the Spain of Philip II. To achieve some balance of power, Elizabeth took advantage of an evolving trade with Islamic powers (Ottomans, Moroccans, even Persians) to secure a limited level of collaboration against the common enemy - Spain. Both trade and diplomacy provide the setting for colourful and highly entertaining stories and adventures, while English theatre - with Shakespeare at its peak - relished the exotic and troubling novelties of exposure to a strange and little understood world beyond the narrow boundaries of the Christian west. {English students may welcome his detailed discussions of a number of plays, not least Othello, which I think may give an unusual insight into many passages.]
  
  Brotton expresses the sincere hope that his book will improve understanding between British Muslims and Christians. In a rational world I am sure it would. I have settled for the more limited achievement of using some of this excellent material to reinforce my internet arguments against islamaphobes. I also appreciated the detailed discussion of government approaches to managing trading relationships, including arguments about the regulation of trade and the baleful effect of monopolies. It surprised me to find how relevant the book is to some heated arguments that are heard today, despite its apparently obscure and distant subject matter. It is a useful reminder that all history is a history of the present.
  
  But it is not a dense or academic book. It is also a compendium of crazy adventures and lurid escapades - they keep the pages turning.
  
  The impetus towards cultural integration that (mostly) followed the mass immigration of various communities into Britain as its empire collapsed in the mid-Twentieth Century, including Muslim communities from South East Asia, is now being questioned as politicians and the media of various persuasions accuse British Muslims of failure to assimilate into the national culture. Born in Bradford in the late 1960s, I went to school in Leeds with Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and we hardly ever spoke about relgious belief and sectarian divisions as we played and learned together. It was not a multicultural idyll, but neither was it defined by theological absolutes. This was my experience of Englishness, and I realize now that it partly explains why I wrote this book. If what I have written makes a small contribution to understanding the long and often difficult history of connections between Islam and England, then it will have been worth the while." [p306]
  
  A three way trade between English merchants, Muslim rulers and Jewish intermediaries had been going on in Morocco for decades, with hardly a murmer of religious or sectarian conflict, but once the private trade came under threat, the regulators opposed the monopolists by playing their trump card, theology, disclosing lurid tales of unscrupulous English merchants in league with villainous Muslim kings and greedy Jewish moneylenders. The problem, however, was not really caused by Muslims or Jews, but by English interlopers like Symcot. [Symcot was the agent for the wealthy Earl of Leicester, a speculator keen to get control of the profitable trade with Morocco.] He was condemned in the merchants' complaints for trading in 'forbidden commodities, with such others that there doth asssociate them about some new and secret contract' with al-Masur [the Muslim ruler] that threatened to end commercial competition and by extension the unregulated trade. The complainants begged Walsingham to write to Symcot as well as to apply presssure on Leicester to stop their high-handed interference. As a close associate of Leicester, Walsingham was unlikely to uphold a protest against the Queen's favourite...." [p121]
  
  Venetian overland trade with South East Asia had been hard hit by the Portuguese discovery of a sea route to the same markets following Vasca de Gama’s voyage to India in 1497-9. Since Portugal’s annexation by Spain in 1580, Philip II’s empire had monopolised the seaborne eastern trade. Its Portuguese fortress at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf controlled maritime traffic in and out of the Gulf and much of the Red Sea, which was ruining Venice. However, in 1597 news reached London and Venice that a Dutch fleet had broken the monopoly by sailing to Java via the Cape and returning to Holland with a consignment of spice and pepper. Essex, always keen to develop an international strategy that would expand his political influence at home and challenge Spain, began to explore the feasibility of an Anglo Dutch maritime alliance that could establish seaborne and overland relations with Persia and break the Iberian stranglehold over the region. The result was an Anglo-Dutch-Persian coalition capable of challenging the dominance of not only the Spanish and Portuguese but also the Ottomans. [p241]
• 
  Yelda Basar Moers

  I would LOVE it if historians would drop the expression the "Clash of Civilizations." All it does is create division and this relatively new release debunks this expression anyhow.
  
  The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam gives new light on the relationship between Islam and the West and what historians call the "Clash of Civilizations." Sultan Murad III, a 16th Century Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and yes "the" Golden Age Queen Elizabeth I of England corresponded about politics and commerce for more than two decades, joined in trade, and established an unprecedented alliance and friendship. When Ottoman forces were up against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, Elizabeth's merchants were supplying the Ottomans with guns.
  
  This book clearly shows that there certainly is no "Clash of Civilizations" when one of the greatest powers of the Western world and one of the greatest powers of the Muslim world get together and have a beautiful friendship (not without bumps of course!).
• 
  Carlos

  This book was basically a recount of all of Elizabeth’s attempts to create a trading relation with the Islamic powers of her age (the ottomans, the Moroccans and the Persians) , after finding herself shut out of Continental Europe because of her Protestantism , all along the books we’ll find some quirky characters that attempted to create such a relationship with various degrees of success, the narrative was boring and I had a hard time following along with the format , and also towards the end the author goes on to talk all about how all of this situation influenced Shakespeare and the effect it had on his plays . Why he decided to give such an amount of attention to that , I don’t know .
• 
  أشرف فقيه

  صنعت الملكة إليزابيث الأولى (ت ١٦٠٣) صورة إنجلترا التي نعرفها اليوم، بمذهبها البروتستانتي وبوادر قوتها الاستعمارية. لكن ما سر علاقتها السياسية والاقتصادية القوية بالعالم الإسلامي؟
  يحكي هذا الكتاب كيف سعت بريطانيا لكسر عزلتها الأوروبية عبر خلق روابط استثنائية مع العثمانيين، والصفويين في فارس، والسعديين في المغرب الأقصى. وكيف تحالفت مع تلك القوى الإسلامية لتضرب أعداءها الكاثوليك في إسبانيا والبرتغال والبابا في روما.
  بشكل ما، شكل التقارب مع العالم الإسلامي ملامح الحياة الاقتصادية والثقافية في إنجلترا الإلزبيثية. وشكلت محاولة التقريب بين الإسلام والبروتستانتية أقصى درجات البراگماتية لا سيما مع محاولات الخليفة السعدي المنصور (الذهبي) التحالف مع إنجلترا لاسترداد الأندلس بعد سحقه البرتغاليين في معركة وادي المخازن سنة ١٥٧٨ . وفتح أسواق فاس، وقبلها إسطنبول، أمام التجار الإنجليز في اختراق لافت للعلاقة المتوترة مع باقي أوروبا.
  ثقافياً، شكل "المحمديون" عنصراً أكيدًا في المزاج الانجليزي، لا سيما مع توالي السفارات بين سليم الثاني واليزابيث من جهة، وبينها وبلاط السعديين من جهة أخرى (أبرزهم محمد الأنّوري الأندلسي). وتجلى ذلك في أعمال الشعراء والمسرحيين الذين استلهموا من الشخصية التركية/المغاربية في أعمالهم وأشهرهم شكسبير (ت ١٦١٦) صاحب «تاجر البندقية» و «عُطيل».
  يدمج الكتاب هذا التأريخ السياسي والاقتصادي والاجتماعي على نحو ممتع، ويعيد تذكيرنا بأن التاريخ ليس فيه حد فاصل ولا هو بالقطعية التي نحسبها لأول وهلة، بل هو -وهوياتنا الناتجة عنه- عبارة عن نسيج شديد التداخل بين المصالح والأعراق والثقافات.
• 
  Julie Bozza

  I wish I could escape the irony of reviewing this book on such a day, but I can't. It wouldn't be honest. Today weighs heavy on me: a day on which it became clear that a slight majority of the British people voted for isolation / independence from Europe.
  
  This Orient Isle is about a time when Protestant England was isolated from Catholic Europe. Elizabeth and her people turned to trading with, and developing political relationships with, the Islamic world. This is a part of history that is usually overlooked. I have read fairly widely about Elizabethan England, and this is not something I'd really encountered before in any kind of detail. I remember seeing the portrait of Moroccan ambassador Muhammad al-Annuri, though darned if I can remember the context now. And of course we're all aware of the plays such as Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Othello and so on, that deal with 'Turks' and 'Moors', but I suppose I had thought of them as exotic flights of fancy that were even less grounded in reality than Shakespeare's plays set in Italy.
  
  The reality was far richer than I'd thought, with thousands of English merchants busily importing and exporting goods, and many of them living in the ports and cities of the Moroccan, Ottoman and Persian Empires. As Brotton explains, the reality was not one of perfect understanding or accord, but there was a respect and a shared interest that amounted at times to friendship, if a wary one.
  
  When Elizabeth died, James came to the throne with a mission of uniting Christianity - and the relationship between English Protestants and various Muslim peoples slipped away into a mere acquaintanceship.
  
  I hope that no one today would take this as a cautionary tale. I find hope in it. The relationship between Christians and Muslims - and indeed Jews, as the other People of the Book - has been more richly and deeply entwined, with more mutual benefit, than is generally supposed. Let's learn more about our history, and strive to do better still in our shared future.
• 
  Lisa

  This was really interesting, if a bit dense—the author used a large number (and wide variety) of primary source materials and wading through the 16th-century verbiage took a little time. But worth it, I think, for a very vivid and far-reaching picture of all the political vicissitudes of the time.
  
  LJ review on the way.
• 
  Blake Charlton

  the past is another country, the old saying goes, they do things differently there. that saying should best be modified to acknowledge how often we think we know, but are truly ignorant of, other countries. despite having earned a degree from yale that focused on elizabethan theater and having written my senior dissertation on Othello, i was completely ignorant of the close ties and desperate alliances that elizabethan england made with morroco, turkey, and persia. in addition to being a fascinating read, this book is a important reminder that we are all more connected to each other in both our own present but in the unknown country of the past.
• 
  Laura

  From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
  Professor Jerry Brotton, one of the UK's leading experts on cultural exchange, examines Queen Elizabeth I's fascination with the Orient. He shows that England's relations with the Muslim world were far more extensive, and often more amicable, than we have ever appreciated, and that their influence was felt across the political, commercial and domestic landscape of Elizabethan England.
  
  Derek Jacobi reads the captivating account of how Britain sent ships, treaties and gifts to the royal families of Morocco and Turkey, including a gold carriage and a full-size pipe organ.
  
  1/5: In this episode, we discover the origins of our taste for Oriental imports - including the sugar which rotted the teeth of our sovereign.
  
  2/5: In this episode, one merchant voyage ends in tragedy when the English crew are captured and turned into galley slaves.
  
  3/5: In this episode, we are taken into the sights and sounds of a royal pageant held in Whitehall in the year 1600 for the Moroccan ambassador.
  
  4/5: In this episode, Queen Elizabeth I's advisers debate how to satisfy yet again the sultan of Turkey's demands for elaborate royal presents.
  
  5/5: In this episode, we visit the London stage to discover the Elizabethan fascination with the little-known world of Islam, particularly by Shakespeare and Marlowe.
  
  Producer: David Roper
  A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
  
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074w30m
• 
  The Contented

  An ambitious book in terms of what it set out to do. The font was small and this took almost five months (with frequent travel) to complete.
  
  Still, I enjoyed the interpretations of Shakespeare.
  
  I agree with the reviewers who raise the Brexit analogy.
  
  If Elizabethan England could overlook differences in terms of seeking out new markets with which to trade, then -hello - what degree of weirdness brought aboutBrexit?
  
  On prosperity, even the Elizabethans got it more right!
• 
  Jenny GB

  I received a free copy of this book through the Goodreads Giveaways.
  
  Once I saw the title, I thought this book would be fascinating! It details the relationship between England and the Middle East during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The relationship reaches its height during her life and ends quickly after her death. During her reign, England becomes involved in commerce and politics with both the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire. The story of various characters that make these contacts as well as the rise and fall of the relationship is really interesting. There's also a lot of information in the book about plays written about Muslims. I'm a little confused as to the inclusion of this content, but perhaps that's the best contemporary commentary available on what people thought of Muslim culture and relationships. While the book reveals the ignorance of the English it also shows that they were quite willing to put aside religious differences (or try to downplay them) so that they could form partnerships. The world could learn quite a lot from this story.
  
  Despite the interesting content, the book is very scholarly and it will probably be hard for a casual reader to get through it. There are numerous quotes from plays and contemporary people that are tough to read despite the modernized language. This is an exciting story, but the author's voice is very factual and sometimes hides the potential interest the story could bring. This led to me liking the book instead of feeling something stronger. It is well researched and the content is important, but I was hoping for a nonfiction book that read a bit more like fiction here. Just be aware of that if you're going to read this one. The effort, though, is worth it because you'll learn a lot about Muslim and Christian relations during this period.
• 
  Dana DesJardins

  This book is fascinating, though it regularly gets bogged down in details. It includes back stories for Shakespeare plays, the tale of the English mechanic sent to rebuild an animated clock, who was given a rare glimpse of the harem, and the gossip that Queen Elizabeth's teeth were blackened by a lifetime of eating Turkish sugar.
  Brotton's mission is not just to inform and amuse, however. He writes in his conclusion: "Now, when much is made of the 'clash of civilizations' between Islam and Christianity, seems to me a good time to remember that the connections between the two faiths are much deeper and more entangled than many contemporary commentators appreciate."
  This book reminds us that we have lived through periods of intolerance before, and artists like Shakespeare show us a mirror of our ignorance in lines like these, attributed to him as partial author of Decker's Sir Thomas More:
  ... Would you be pleased
  To find a nation of such barbarous temper
  That, breaking out in hideous violence,
  Would not afford you an abode on earth,
  Whet their detested knives against your throats,
  Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
  Owed not nor made you, nor that the elements
  Were not all appropriate to your comforts
  But chartered unto them? What would you think
  To be thus used?"
• 
  Wanda

  26 MAR 2016 - joining the Ladies.
  
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074w30m
• 
  Alex Sarll

  Against white nationalist fantasies of some ill-defined past in which European Christendom stood united against the Other, a helpful reminder of how things actually stood; even the velvet, silk and jewels style which we associate with the Tudors was recognised at the time as a Moroccan import. Obviously there was a degree of realpolitik behind the idea of allying Protestant England with the Moors against the enemy sat between them both, Catholic Spain. But theologically too, Protestantism was such a new thing that it wasn't yet clear whether it was any closer to Catholicism than Islam* was. The mirror of which, of course, was the spectre of 'turning Turk'; when most of the English had already changed faith once within living memory, the prospect that they might do so again was not unrealistic, as unlikely as hindsight might make it seem, especially when individual captives or renegades did do exactly that. Remembering also and always that the world of Islam had its own schism and accompanying wars. I don't wholly buy Brotton's early attempts to map the Sunni/Shi'ite division to Catholic/Protestant, particularly since it's not how the later alliances fall out; equally, you have the Sunni Ottomans drawing parallels between themselves and Protestantism on the grounds of iconoclasm, and really, you could find the justification for any combination if you had reason to look for it, which someone generally did. Hell, there were even a few times when all Christendom did unite as one as per the fever dreams of the fash, as in the immediate aftermath of Lepanto – though given how quickly that evaporated, this is just one more way in which Lepanto belongs in the dictionary as the definition of a false dawn. Still, I did like the first English account of the big division within Islam, courtesy of one Anthony Jenkinson, who concluded that the whole Sunni/Shia dispute was about moustaches. Which, let's face it, is still probably a better account than the average rural Brit could manage today. Jenkinson is a key player in this account, a man who despite coming from Market Harborough** had an astonishing knack for talking himself into audiences with distant potentates, then winning great deals; I picture him played by David Tennant. Other stars of the story include Thomas Stukely, essentially a less plausible Lord Flasheart, and the Portuguese king Sebastian I, who apparently remains a figure of great national mourning and nostalgia despite being singularly inept even by the standards of daft bastard monarchs. Other chapters focus on the influence of all this on playwrights, especially Marlowe and his heirs (many of whom were dreadful, but one of whom would go on to a certain renown). Though even the worst of the pre-Marlowe playwrights, the sententious Robert Wilson, would struggle to have come up with an image as startling to notions of Christian unity as the bells from churches being sold for gun-metal to Islamic states which would then go on to use them against other Christians, and that was real. To think people say our modern arms deals lack scruples! Mercifully, though, at least until the end Brotton never feels the need to stress these modern resonances, nor those with Brexit, avoiding such 'Hey kids!' embarrassments and trusting readers to draw their own inferences. There's a final chapter on Othello, but the story pretty much concludes with the antics of the appalling Sherley brothers, who scrapped and scammed their way around Europe while also providing the Bard with a chance to beat Airplane! to the classic 'surely' pun. Indeed, one particularly witless anti-Stratfordian was convinced Anthony Sherley must have been the real author of the plays. But he seems rather more reminiscent of another British politicker, what with the getting into needless scraps with Persians, and being not unfairly summarised thus: "The Englishman is doubtless a liar and unreliable though a great talker and well informed."
  
  *Brotton reminds us, of course, that no European of the period would have used the term; the mangling of such words as they had sort-of-grasped, like the name of the Koran, is also a recurring detail.
  **I do love the emphasis on people's specific origins, because it's so much funnier when someone from Great Yarmouth ends up as a converted eunuch treasurer, or a lad from Warrington gets a go in the Ottoman seraglio because of his impressive prowess with his organ (not like that. But then again, presumably a bit like that when it comes to the reward).
• 
  Peter Dunn

  Elizabethan England meets strange new people and puts them in plays and plots
  
  I tend to prefer the Stuart / Cromwellian period to the Tudors. However this book weaves together Tudor diplomatic history, Elizabethan adventure travelogue, and theatrical history, to open up a subject that was almost entirely new to me. That being how Elizabethan England engaged with, and learned about, the three major Islamic power centres that seemed to be at the edges of the known world for most English people of that time.
  
  A whole new world of history. In fact, as this book notes at one point, it may even have been a very different New World had Elizabeth agreed to one proposed alliance which would have seen Islamic colonists setting up in the Americas.
  
• 
  Patricia

  Brotton's approach is perfect for fans of renaissance drama (especially Shakespeare). The books ends with an extensive consideration of the creation of Othello during the time the Moroccan diplomat, a-Annuri, was in England to propose a military campaign against Spain. This episode was one of many that enhanced my appreciation of Queen Elizabeth as a canny negotiator on a political stage with some daunting heavies. Brotton books also offers a thoughtful exploration of the ways in which England thought about Islam. I struggled to keep up with all the characters, but that is mainly because this was new territory for me.
• 
  Rowena Abdul Razak

  A decent attempt to try and find the roots of Islam’s positon in England’s history. Good interweaving with Shakespeare and Marlowe among others. Quite a fun journey looking at the different attempts by English adventurers, politicians and travellers to establish strong links with the mighty Moroccan, ottoman and Safavid empires.
• 
  Mark

  Excellent history: the sort we weren't taught at school. How Queen Elizabeth I forged trading alliances with Morocco and the Ottoman Empire (cloth for sugar) - and how those racial Islamic stereotypes ('the Moor') made their way onto the Elizabethan stage,(Tamburlaine,Othello). England needed these alliances to try and contain the Spanish,who Drake failed to see off after the Armada. Flagwavers,take note.
• 
  Victoria Frow

  Good. Interesting to read about how Elizabeth I allied with the Islamic world and how we worked together to promote trade. This is a good book to show that even though there were differences in religion and race that was put aside to create unity as that was Elizabeth's ultimate goal. Shows that it is possible for unity to happen which in this time is a good book to read. Thank you Netgalley for giving me a proof copy.
• 
  Sajith Kumar

  Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century was a defining moment in the history of England. Henry VIII’s adoption of the faith which the popish clergy termed as apostasy forced the country’s destiny to diverge from that of continental Europe where Pope’s writ reigned supreme. The catholic world devised all means in their power to browbeat England away from Protestantism. However, Queen Elizabeth I turned into a bulwark of national pride and prestige. Her subjects boldly stood behind their monarch in fighting off the forces of Catholicism. However, England needed to have allies in their war and trade efforts. Who else can be more apt than the Muslim powers that rimmed the Mediterranean littoral who were themselves enemies of the catholic states? England soon established relations with the Ottoman, Moroccan and Persian empires. Trade and cultural interactions with them flourished towards the close of sixteenth century. English theater came to be a mirror of public opinion of the impact created by the increased interchange with Muslims. This book is a summary of the brief period of Elizabeth’s reign, how England obtained a good commercial rapport with Islamic kingdoms and how it all tumbled down after the death of Elizabeth. Jerry Brotton is a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London. He is a renowned broadcaster and critic, as well as the author of many books on East-West relations and history of early-Modern age.
  
  Religion is a powerful factor in state formation and further developing their interactions. Christianity had an old score to settle against Islam for conquering the Holy Land. After its ultimately futile crusades, a working relationship seems to have originated after the fall of Constantinople to Ottomans in 1453. Close on its heels came the Reformation which rent the Christian body politic into Catholics and Protestants. All political equations changed in a few decades. Catholic states under the spiritual – and often temporal too – guidance of the Pope tried their best to score over their Protestant rivals, while the Protestants were not averse to enlist the alliance of the Muslim empires of the Ottoman, Moroccan and Persian to defeat the Pope’s forces. Brotton begins the book in an atmosphere of intrigue and Christian fraternal antagonism, when Queen Elizabeth I receive a letter from Ottoman Sultan Murad III offering to allow English merchants to trade with his country. Charles II of Spain and the Papal interests lay in the middle of both and hence treated as a common enemy. The Protestants equated Islamic aniconism in religious worship to their own iconoclasm that separated them from their Catholic brethren. Similarly, the Ottomans observed a kindred spirit in the Protestants’ fierce opposition against Catholic rituals venerating saints and adoring graven images of Christ and the Madonna. Deriving maximum mileage out of the prevalent perceptions, the English established trading relations with all three major Islamic regimes. The book introduces detailed narratives of how the trade agents faced very heavy odds in foreign lands where they were initially torn between the hostility of ambassadors of European catholic states and the condescending indifference of the sultan. Anglo-Ottoman relations began with the trade concessions obtained by the young adventurer Anthony Jenkinson from Suleyman the Magnificent in 1554. William Harborne consolidated the trading relations under Murad III in 1579. England was driven to the wall when Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 and ordered his supporters to isolate and dethrone her. England orchestrated attacks against the Spanish with active help of Moroccans, who were in turn became so impressed as to let Elizabeth known by the affectionate sobriquet of Sultana Isabel.
  
  England’s increased involvement in Mediterranean politics produced its echo in the cultural context as well. English writers were increasingly attracted to Islamic themes and experimented with a cast of characters which drastically differed from the established canon. Anti-heroes in the guise of Moors (an epithet of Muslims that came to be associated with them in the sense of inhabitants of Morocco) came on the stage with thunderous impact on the masses. Its greatest influence was seen in theatre. It all began with Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine in 1587 and Jew of Malta just three years later. The floodgates of creativity were opened wide with these sensational plays. Of more than sixty plays featuring Turks, Moors and Persians performed in London’s public theaters between 1576 and 1603, forty were staged between 1588 and 1599. More than ten of them acknowledged explicit debts to Tamburlaine. William Shakespeare was another glorious entrant to this branch of drama that enacted plays which transcended established boundaries of morality, religion and ethnicity. While Marlowe emphasized his characters’ relentless will to power, Shakespeare made historic failures into figures of empathy, interest and pathos. This book examines several Shakespearean plays with a critical eye to their historical inspiration. Plays such as Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello have a strong Moorish influence on the storyline. Othello, in fact, was a Moor whose uncertain entry into Venetian aristocracy through his marriage with Desdemona was marred by the intrigues caused by racial hatred personified in the character of Iago. Brotton makes a memorable review of these plays and exposes the defining parameter of its motivation to Mediterranean concerns that caused a stir in contemporary London.
  
  Strangely, the Anglo-Islamic alliance collapsed as swiftly as it began. Elizabeth died in 1603 and within a year, King Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco died of plague and Sultan Mehmed III of Turkey of a heart attack. James I who succeeded Elizabeth wanted to resurrect closer ties with Christian kingdoms, catholic or not. Continental kingdoms supporting the Pope had also learned the hard lesson in trying to humble the English whose might stood unchallenged in the sea. A quick rapprochement between England and Spain made the position of Muslim ambassadors precarious in London. James turned towards the west, to America while the Ottoman sultan turned east, to Persia as the next battleground to expand their empires, creating an uncanny inactivity in the Mediterranean. The sharp polarization on religious lines helped European Christians take a lead over the Near Eastern Muslims with rapid progress in scientific knowledge and giant strides in technology. Muslim culture began its downward slide to stagnancy when they were driven out of the gates of Vienna in 1683. They were never to raise their heads again in Europe for a long, long time. Islamic motifs ceased to inspire English playwrights around the time of Elizabeth’s death. Shakespeare didn’t use Moorish characters after Othello. Brotton paints a closely followed picture of how the curtain fell on Islamic influence and the era of Orientalism began. The book includes a good collection of colour plates depicting portraits and other scenes related to the narrative.
  
  The book is highly recommended.
  
• 
  Edith

  A fascinating account. I had had no idea of the degree of communication between the English queen and her nation and the rulers of north Africa and the Ottoman Empire. The period of Elizabeth's reign was not only full of constant warfare between and among Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim entities, but a period of new economic ideas and the opening of new trading partnerships as well. The complications of her relationships with those of different faiths--ones with whom theoretically she was entirely at odds--were great, and greatly resonant now. Elizabeth found, desperately in need of military support in her isolation from most of the rest of Europe (she had been excommunicated a decade into her reign), a modus vivendi for dealing with Islamic kingdoms.
  
  Mr. Brotton is a very lucid writer, who brings to life the many participants in his story (some of whom were very eccentric indeed--numbers of British, Islamic, and other, rulers, diplomats, merchants, and adventurers inhabit these pages). He writes with intelligence of the cultural effects of Islamic influence on England, especially on its literature. It must be said, however, that Mr. Brotton could have used the services of a better copyeditor: A few obvious errors in the text, and overly long exegesis of Shakespeare's plays as they relate to Islam and the English view of various Moroccan, Persian, and Turkish peoples, mar the book. Small criticisms, however.
  
  This is not a biography of Queen Elizabeth, nor of the various Eastern potentates with whom she deals. It deals with their lives only in the connection of their own and their nations' off-and-on trade and military alliances. However, that rarely explored slice of Queen Elizabeth's life is of great interest--and perhaps of relevance in the clash of cultures in which we find ourselves in the 21st century as well.
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  Sara

  Tudor England is my favorite era in history and finding something new is always a treat. This book is amazing on so many levels because it introduces a side of Tudor history that is rarely discussed, but is also reflective in modern news. While the focus is on England and the Islamic kingdoms, it also discusses the world at large, which I rather enjoyed instead of the usual England + France + Hapsburg domains kerfuffles. The book also answered some basic questions about Islam and explored a fascinating mercantile history of which ended when Elizabeth I died. Overall, I enjoyed the descriptive scenes, the global viewpoints, and the influence the trade had on society and literature of the time.
• 
  Emmanuel Gustin

  In this book, Jerry Brotton pursues two parallel tracks to describe the relationship between the England of Elizabeth I and the muslim states of the Mediterranean. In the first, he tells us about the travellers, those who went there to experience it for themselves. In the second, he tells us about the men who imagined the east, with a focus on the playwrights who brought it to the stage, especially (of course) William Shakespeare. It was a good idea that did not work very well in practice, because the two tracks are very loosely connected, and Brotton is reduced to speculating that a Moroccan diplomat may have gone to the theatre, and a mining of text for real-world references that sometimes feels a little desperate.
  
  The traveller's story plunges the reader in the twilight world of Elizabethan foreign politics, where a man might be trader, diplomat, spy, mercenary, con-artist and traitor all at once. Adventurers who tried to reach foreign capitals the long way round, such as the journey from the White Sea over Moscow and down the Volga to reach Persia. It's an enjoyable story of diplomatic backstabbing and unenjoyable rogues, such as the baffling Sherley brothers. Brotton makes an obvious Brexit reference when he describes protestant England as at war with (most of) Europe and seeking alliances far away, in Ottoman Turkey, Persia, and Morocco. But for politicians at both ends of the deal these were peripheral relationships, clearly secondary to problems closer to home, and involving a minimal commitment of blood, time and money. Apparently that didn't stop them from imaging a Anglo-Moroccan alliance to invade Spanish South America, but so much was gathering wool. Brotton puts a full stop at the death of Elizabeth I and the accession to the throne of James I.
  
  The playwright's track, as said above, often feels a little desperate. It is easy enough for Brotton to convince us that there was a fashion for exotic characters on stage, and it is not even surprising when so many of these plays were set in the Mediterranean or even more eastern lands. It is harder to sell the reader the idea that a few lines in Henry V are clearly a reference to Eastern politics. Obvious to Brotton perhaps, but did the 16th century theatregoer really have Turkey on his mind to the same degree as Brotton? And when Shakespeare set a scene in Venice or Cyprus, was it because he wanted to tell us something about the East, or just because the same scene would have been too shocking if set in, say, London? Brotton's argumentation is often laborious enough to trigger disbelief. Is really it a coincidence, he wonders, that Al-Annuri had his portrait painted at age 42, when it was also the 42nd year of Elizabeth's reign? Apparently not considering that it might have been rather difficult for Al-Annuri to avoid such a coincidence.
  
  This is a mixed bag, then. It merits a good rating by itself, but with the nagging suspicion that someone else probably did this better. If not, then someone should.
  
• 
  Mark Walker

  The enticing title of this book belies its full scope, as it's a window into more than just England, but documents the multinational intrigue of the 16th Century. The reader is transported between London, Constantinople, Moscow, Prague, Madrid, Venice, Marrakesh, and many other sites where actual events took unexpected turns. I don't think anyone could write a novel with a more captivating plot than this real world history.
  
  During the period covered, Christendom was torn apart by the Protestant Reformation and the effective atomization of Christianity as a result. Queen Elizabeth's incentive for cultivating economic ties with the Turkish Sultan was partly driven by England's isolation from the rest of Catholic Europe following her excommunication by the Pope. This encouraged the seemingly unintuitive collaboration between Protestant Christians and the Islamic nations.
  
  Concurrently the continuing schism within Islam between Sunni and Shia affected intra-Islamic relations between Turkey, Persia, and North Africa. It's apparent from the material covered that the conflicts within and between the different sects of Christianity and Islam were driven more by national and commercial interests than anything theological.
  
  Throughout this period, the Jews have an integral role, often as commercial proxies between Muslims and Christians. And sometimes they found themselves on the short end of the deal.
  
  There are no heroes in these events, only fallible humans like you and me, some with more impure motives than others. Schoolbook figures such as Sir Francis Drake are revealed as hardly invincible. The blatant racism and cultural chauvinism in many of Shakespeare's plays expose the mythology about the southern Mediterranean circulating among a white English population with limited actual information about the people there. The unfamiliar customs and behavior in London of some individuals from those regions sometimes did not help dispel those prejudices. In an age when global navigation had just then become a reality, experiences like these were unfolding for different peoples worldwide, each in their own form.
  
  In the audio book version, the narrator does an excellent job with international pronunciations and inflections. This adds valuable context to the content.
  
  Far beyond its entertainment and informative value, this book is essential for understanding the cultural influences driving international relations in our own time. It would be difficult to ever again view institutional religion as a purely spiritual endeavor. National and commercial interests dominate most religious thought, more so than most believers are willing to admit. They may need to seek higher and deeper for the still small voice of the God of Abraham.
• 
  Ben

  This Orient Isle is a wonderful exploration of a part of British (and furthermore, world) history that I have been embarrassingly ignorant of until now.
  Taking as his starting point, the state visit of a Moroccan ambassador to Elizabeth I at the start of the 17th century, Brotton then takes a step backwards to the start of Elizabeth's reign, to lucidly outline the surprisingly close relationship between the developing Muslim world and post-reformation Britain.
  Taking the reader on a journey through the ever-evolving Catholic and Muslim empires of the Hapsburgs, Ottomans and Moroccans, Brotton explains how via medieval trade routes spanning Spain, Portugal, North Africa and what we now consider to be the Middle East, the Elizabethan empire builders exploited shared enemies and a shared antipathy towards both Catholicism and various strands of Islam to cultivate a close relationship with Morocco as a bulwark against Spanish imperialism.
  Along the way, the reader begins to understand how numerous cultures and religions lived side by side in the great cities of the time - Marrakesh, Constantinople, Aleppo and Venice. Descriptions of what must have been stunning locations are by turns evocative and intimate, with Brotton's eloquent writing and studious research illuminating a hidden world, where saltpetre was bartered for metal, and sugars and spices from Asia culturally colonised Western Europe, an influence that has not since waned. Brotton's exploration of the theological backgrounds of the key figures at the time is thorough and detailed, and it's interesting to understand how easily pioneering traders looking to ingratiate themselves into local culture were able to adopt the traditions and beliefs that they encountered, demonstrating the similarities between ostensibly distant beliefs, as well as the obvious differences.
  The second half of the book focusses primarily on the introduction of exotic Moors and Turks onto the Tudor stages of London. Brotton's analysis of key Shakespeare and Marlowe texts is stunning, providing what for me was a brand new perspective into my home city 400 years ago. Most interesting is the way in which these figures developed from what the theatre-goers of the time would've recognised as barbaric savages, into the fully drawn, complex and human characters populating Othello and The Tempest. Brotton very successfully uses the stage to demonstrate the developing multicultural world of London in much the same way that contemporary fictional works of stage and screen reflect the current diversity of modern British cities.
  This Orient Isle is a beautifully written document of a hitherto hidden world, and it held my fascinated attention throughout. At a time when racial and religious tensions in the UK remain so politically significant, it is important to understand that Britain has long welcomed and assimilated a diverse array of global citizens, contributing to the growth and prosperity of this nation.
• 
  Pat MacEwen

  This book examines a side of Elizabethan politics that shows up in Shakespeare more than in history books. When the Virgin Queen was crowned, she did not inherit an empire. That had been lost long since by King John, among others. Among the many threats facing her were a serious lack of money, lack of political or religious unity among the English, and the bitter enmity of Europe's Catholic powers, including both the Pope and Philip II of Spain. Where could she turn to find allies? Where else but to those already arrayed against those same powers? She began with the Calvinist Free Dutch, but then reached out to the Shah of Iran, the Sultan of Morocco, and the Ottoman Sultan Murad III. For nearly the entire length of her reign, Elizabeth I dickered and dealt with the Muslim princes ruling North Africa and the Middle East, quietly trading banned munitions and military supplies along with woolen cloth for sugar, spices, and ready access to still more distant markets, all in spite of Catholic embargos and diplomatic maneuvers. For that purpose the first joint stock companies came into being, but there was much more to it than trade. There were also military alliances afoot that could easily have become major turning points in world history, opening up the New World to Muslim colonization and/or an early end to the Habsburgs. Well-written, and well-tied to the dramatic responses of Britain's playwrights, poets, novelists and adventurers, ranging from the origins of the tragedy of Othello to the nearly unbelievable biographies of the three Sherley brothers. The similarities to the current state of affairs between the Christian and Muslim peoples of the world are striking, and the what-if possibilities for alternate histories are manifold and marvelous.
• 
  Pamela

  This book deals primarily with two topics relating to encounters between Elizabethan England and the Muslim world. The first involves diplomatic missions aimed at forging political and trading alliances, mainly with Morocco or the Ottoman Empire. The second covers cultural representations of the Moor and the Turk in the Elizabethan theatre - while Shakespeare's Othello is the most notable example, other plays and playwrights are introduced to show how Muslims were presented to the English public.
  
  Brotton's style is quite academic, particularly when dealing with accounts of diplomatic missions, but it is not dry or dull. He paints a picture of some colourful characters on both sides of the encounters, and adds as much detail as possible. His enthusiasm for the theatre also shines through, and these sections are very interesting, particularly where they reflect the viewpoints demonstrated in the 'real world' chapters. During the Elizabethan age, Catholic Spain is seen as more of a threat than the Ottomans, and this leads to some intriguing and surprising attempts at cooperation. In any case, pragmatic trading needs often trumped theological constraints.
  
  I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Tudor history as this is an aspect of that topic which is not often explored.