Islamic West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

Abstract This area, from the Black and Caspian Seas to the Mediterranean, was dominated by Islam and the Ottoman Empire, which had expanded impressively in the later Middle Ages, especially under the imperial rule of the powerful Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, whose Pan-Ottoman strategy absorbed a range of diverse peoples under his sole rule. The English were eager to trade with the Ottomans and to forge an alliance with the empire in particular to counteract the hegemony of Spain in Western Europe and a number of trade missions were sent which are reproduced here. The increased prominence of Ottoman power then led English dramatists to produce stage figures caricaturing the bombastic Turk. This chapter includes extracts from Anthony Jenkinson on his journey to the Caspian Sea through the lands of the Tatars; Thomas Dallam, who travelled to Istanbul to deliver an organ to the emperor, Mehmed III; Anthony Sherley, a wily and self-serving diplomat who was entrusted with establishing relations in Persia; Fynes Moryson on the nature and characteristics of the Ottoman Empire; and George Sandys, Henry Timberlake, and William Lithgow on the Jews in Ottoman Palestine and Jerusalem.