Emma S.

Herrick
HIST 278
Book Review #1
Due 7 October 2016
The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam. Jerry Brotton. New York:
Viking, 20th September 2016. 352 pages.
The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam, written by Jerry
Brotton, a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University in London, seeks to tell
the remarkable story of the Elizabethans who traveled to the Muslim world, what they learned
and how their discoveries, and the stories they told, affected life back home.1 Brottons book is
different from many historical texts in that it does not assume any sort of expertise on any
subject covered. The Sultan and the Queen is written very much for both the layman and the
expert to enjoy, with a smooth, almost storybook, writing style that easily engrosses any reader.
In this book, Brotton explains an unprecedented trade agreement between Queen Elizabeth I of
England and leaders of the Islamic world.
In 1570, Elizabeth I was excommunicated by Pope Pius V, effectively cutting English
merchants off from most trade with the largely Catholic portions of Europe. In order to explore
new trade possibilities, the Queen sent merchants to the domain of the Ottoman Sultan Murad
III. Upon Murad learning of this, he sent Elizabeth I a letter declaring that if she was prepared
to accept Murads superiority and to function as his subject, he would be happy to protect her
merchants.1 In a different economic situation, this sort of unabashed show of superiority by the
Sultan may have offended Elizabeth beyond what she could have ignored, but due to her
circumstances she responded as a subject and thus in 1579 began an unlikely alliance between

the two. This alliance lasted throughout Queen Elizabeth Is reign, leading to a proposed military
alliance with Morocco in 1600, and finally ended with her successor King James I. King James
was distrustful of the Turks and ended a partnership and company that throughout Elizabeths
reign had grown to that height that (without comparison) it is the most flourishing and
beneficial company to the commonwealth of any in England.2
After an explanation of how Queen Elizabeth I came to power, the end of her relationship
with Catholic Europe, and how the relationship between Elizabeth and the Islamic leaders came
about, Brotton launches into a largely chronological account of Englands rocky-at-best
relationship with its new Islamic trade partners. Most of the accounts are told from the
perspective of Elizabeths various ambassadors. For example, almost immediately we learn
about Anthony Jenkinson, one Elizabeths first ambassadors, who managed to talk his way into
the kind of formal trading privileges usually only granted to heads of state with Sultan Murad.1
Another ambassador, William Harborne, who was tasked with establishing a dialog with
Murads grand vizier, was not nearly as successful. He ended up locked in a bitter power
struggle with Murads consort.1 Later, we hear about the Murads death in 1595 and his
successor Sultan Mehmed through the lens of the very green, very new ambassador Lello, who
was thrust into his position due to the death of his predecessor. Lello faced many struggles
completing his duty mainly not being taken seriously by the Ottomans and he eventually sent
a letter to London pleading that the Queen send word to the new Sultan confirming Lellos
ascendance to the position of ambassador.
Throughout Brottons chronicle, Elizabeths military ties to Europe and the Islamic world
is a very important theme. Elizabeths trade of artillery with the Moroccans during their war with
Spain and Portugal around 1580 partially ostracized her from the Islamic world and had her

labeled a heretic queen by Europe. After this time, Elizabeth re-built her relationship with
Morocco and the Ottoman Empire through trade, enough so that by the late 1580s hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of Elizabethan merchants, diplomats, sailors, artisans and privateers were
plying their trade throughout the Islamic world, from Marrakesh to Qazvin in Persia.1 However,
around 1587, it became clear that Elizabeth needed to expand her relationship with the Ottomans
and Moroccans to aid her in military action. Spain was planning on launching an attack against
the heretic queen, and Elizabeth and her representatives directed the ambassadors to appeal to
the Islamic leaders to come to her aid with their military. Neither Sultan agreed, but England
somehow managed to defeat the Spaniards (much of the victory was due to the storms that befell
the Spanish ships, but of course the victory was claimed to be due to English superiority all the
same). It was clear that the sultan in Morocco was weighing his strategies and was hanging back
to see if Elizabeth was a worthy ally before aligning himself with her. Upon the Spanishs defeat,
it became clear that the mighty Spanish were not as invincible as he believed, and that England
and her female ruler could no longer be dismissed as peripheral to the commercial and
diplomatic world of the Mediterranean.1 This led to a proposed military alliance from Morocco
in 1600, though by this time England had deemed the conflict to be over and done with and saw
no real reason to enter into battle with the Spanish again. The same offer may have come from
the Ottoman Sultan Murad if he had not died in January of 1595, being succeeded by his son
Sultan Mehmed. Elizabeths ambassadors said of the new sultan that it was unclear whether
Mehmed would be as sympathetic toward the English as his father had been, but the signs were
not promising, and that he did not seem to be the type of man inclined to be a warrior.1
Elizabeth tried to save her relationship with the country, but it did not result in the military
alliance she seemed to be hoping for. Still, when Elizabeth died in 1603, she had repelled

foreign Catholic invasion, firmly established Protestantism as the state religion, established a
stable if unwieldy government and expanded her commercial and political interests abroad,
nowhere more successfully than in the Islamic world.1
The reading of Brottons incredibly well researched and well-written chronicle is largely
an enjoyable experience. He takes the time in his descriptions to paint pictures in your mind of
what the scenes may have looked like. Unfortunately, these descriptions are often accompanied
with large, flowery language that may leave the reading carrying two books this one and a
dictionary to accompany it. However, this issue crops up infrequently enough that it does not
take one too far out of the story.
Brotton takes a tremendous amount of time to ensure his readers understanding of the
text, from the total layman on up. He does not assume the reader understands the geographical
location of Morocco, let alone the basis for political unrest between Persia and the Ottoman
Empire. These explanations allow a student of Islamic history of any degree of experience to
understand Brotton the same as any scholar. However, it does often tend to be the case
throughout Sultan and the Queen that Brotton goes on long asides that do not particular lend to
the story from the readers perspective. For example, there are pages upon pages in which
Brotton tells about the various plays written in England featuring this or that Turk character.
This information is interesting of course, and certainly lends to the readers understanding of
how England understood the Islamic people, but the length at which Brotton goes into detail on
this is, in my opinion, unnecessarily extensive.
All in all, Brottons book The Sultan and the Queen provides a very well researched,
primarily easy to read, chronicle of an amazingly complicated period in history. If Brottons
intentions with writing this book were truly to make a small contribution to understanding the

long and often difficult history of connections between Islam and the West, as he states in his
Epilogue, then I would agree with Brotton that he has certainly done that wonderfully.

References
1

Jerry Brotton. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam. (New York:
Viking, 20th September 2016), 352 pages.
2

Lewis Roberts, A Merchants Mappe of Commerce (Loindon, 1638), pp. 80