The staging of William III's politics of peace with the Turks andThe Alcoran of Mahometin Nicholas Rowe'sTamerlane

Abstract

Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane (1701) dramatizes the nuanced and complex relations of England during the Glorious Revolution with the Turkish Empire, recalling William III's efforts in mediating the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 as a permanent peace between the Turks and the Holy League in order to end Louis XIV's imperial gains from the Turkish wars. Axalla's incarnation of the English ambassador, Lord Paget (1637–1713), indicates Rowe's play as a celebration of English diplomacy with the Porte. Notwithstanding modern scholars interpreting the character of Bajazet as a historical parallel with Louis XIV, it is worth noting that he also connotes Sultan Mustapha II (1664–1703), who endeavored to restore ancient Turkish conquests by fighting in the wars in person. The circulation of the trope of “the most Christian Turk” during the Glorious Revolution as a designation of Louis XIV reflects the Turkish–French military alliance against which Rowe's play stands out. Moreover, Tamerlane keeps shifting the parallel between, on the one hand, William III, as noted by Rowe, and, on the other, as a revisionist, peaceful Muslim. Tamerlane appropriates several verses that call for peace from the Qur'an, which was translated by Alexander Ross as The Alcoran of Mahomet in 1649.

Staging the Tories' Islamic Jihad against George I and the Whigs in Edward Young's The Revenge

“…Young's The Revenge was performed three years after the Treaty of Passarowitz, localizing Shakespeare's Muslim character Othello to revel in Alonzo's/Othello's/George I's victories in the Islamic world. Just as Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane (1701) celebrates allegorically the Muslim Tartar Tamerlane's/William III's mediation of the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) between the Ottomans and the Holy League against Bajazet/Louis XIV (Alhawamdeh, 2022b, 372–379), Young's The Revenge continues the Whiggish enhancement of George I as a defender of Protestantism against the revenging Muslim Zanga/Iago/the Old Pretender and popery in England. Just as James Francis Edward Stuart or the Old Pretender, as he was called by the Whigs, failed to claim the English throne during the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1719, the Moor Zanga/Iago/the Old Pretender declares Jihad against Alonzo/Othello/George I.…”

“…Matthew Dimmock explicates that the English translation of the Qur'an promotes the unfolding of the trope of the “English Mahomet” (Dimmock, 2013, 2) by early modern English writers. Hussein A. Alhawamdeh demonstrates that the Restoration and early eighteenth‐century playwrights reformulated Christopher Marlowe's Muslim character of Tamburlaine or Timūr in Tamburlaine the Great Parts One and Two (1587) from a burner into a reader of the Qur'an, as represented in Charles Saunders's Tamerlane the Great (1681) and Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane (1701) (Alhawamdeh, 2022b, 371–385; Alhawamdeh, 2023, 1–24). Young appropriates several verses of Jihad as “self‐defense” 6 from The Alcoran of Mahomet —as represented in Sūrat The Cow or Al‐Baqarah in Arabic, Sūrat Pilgrimage or Al‐Ḥajj in Arabic, and Sūrat The Tryal or Al‐Mumtaḥanah in Arabic (and verses of the non‐Trinitarian position of Islam) as appearing in Sūrat The Women or Al‐Nisā' in Arabic and Sūrat The Table or Al‐Mā'dah in Arabic—as an allegorical warning to the public of the Tories' and the Old Pretender's mimicking of the Islamic Jihad in restoring Catholicism/Islam into Hanoverian England, as will also be discussed.…”