English

Abstract

As one of the most famous works of Marlowe’s plays, Tamburlaine the Great implied the theme of distorting the orient images, particularly Muslims. The orientalist representation of Muslims in the Elizabethan stage was deliberately oriented against Islam. However, more than 50 literary works targeted Islam during the Elizabethan era. Tamburlaine the Great is considered an oriental play that targeted Islam horribly in a Western fashion to depict Islam as being based on cruel, offensive, and barbarian deeds. These horrible images were raised in western literary works after the Crusades as Part of the intellectual invasion; consequently, this research paper attempts to reveal the Greek depiction of Muslims in Tamburlaine the Great based on orientalism theory by Said. The authors reveal how Marlowe used his knowledge of Greek history to demonize the Muslim army and Islamic culture and depict them similarly to Greek myths and how his early skepticism and fallacies contributed to constructing a common ground for hostile ideologies targeting Islam, such as monstrosity and demonization of the other. Marlowe portrayed the Muslim army metaphorically as monsters such as Typhon and Hydra. He chose the negative side of the Greek myths to represent it as Part of Islam. The Islamic culture was also negatively represented as an imitation of Greek history. Moreover, Marlowe reinforced the Greek history, dictions, and beliefs on behalf of the Islamic culture so that Islamic culture was represented with ambiguity and falsifications to be inferior while the Western one was superior.   Key words: Tamburlaine the Great, orientalism, Muslim, depiction, Greek monster.