ESTONIAN ACADEMY
PUBLISHERS
eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
PUBLISHED
SINCE 1997
 
TRAMES cover
TRAMES. A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences
ISSN 1736-7514 (Electronic)
ISSN 1406-0922 (Print)
Impact Factor (2022): 0.2
IBRAHIM PASHA: A CHRISTIAN HERO IN THE OTTOMAN PALACE; pp. 427–441
PDF | https//doi.org/10.3176/tr.2022.4.05

Author
Fahd Mohammed Taleb Saeed Al-Olaqi
Abstract

The article examines the representation of the Turkish pioneer personage called Ibrahim Pasha (1493–1536) in Elkanah Settle’s “Ibrahim the Illustrious Bassa” (1677). He is known as the Westerner born a Christian, and the favourite to Sultan Soliman the Magnificent (1494–1566) who viciously executed him. But in Settle, the conspiracy to slay Ibrahim failed. The Turkish grand vizier Ibrahim is symbolic in Restoration Age for the terrific abuse of friendship by the Ottoman Sultan. Settle envisages Ibrahim Pasha with admiration for his success as well as his dramatic fate to encounter the Turkish tyranny. The author meticulously portrays the Christian born Ibrahim’s fidelity against the Turkish Soliman’s infidelity. However, Settle articulates his allure in the confrontation between Europe and Turkey in the Ottoman palace of Constantinople to amuse the English audience.

References

Agoston, G. (2005) Guns for the Sultan: military power and the weapons industry in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Al-Olaqi, Fahd. (2017) “Image of Mustapha in Fulke Greville’s Mustapha (1594)” International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature 6, 2, 64–72. 
https://doi.org/10.7575/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.2p.63

Al-Olaqi, Fahd M. (2013) “The Oriental other Soliman the Magnificent in Kyd’s Soliman and Perseda”. Trames 17, 1, 35–54. 
https://doi.org/10.3176/tr.2013.1.02

Atcıl, Zahit (2015) “State and government in the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire: The Grand Vizierates of Rüstem Pasha (1544–1561)”. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago.

Atıl, Esin (1998) The age of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.

Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, J. Schacht, and Bernard Lewis, eds. (1998) The encyclopaedia of Islam: new edition, Vol. 3: H-Iram by Vol-III. s. v.

Chew, Samuel C. (1965) The Crescent and The Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance. New York: Octagon Books.

Fleischer, H. Cornell (2007) “Shadows of Shadows: Prophecy and Politics in 1530s Istanbul”. International Journal of Turkish Studies 13, 1-2, 51–62.

Gulter, I. Ş. (2019) “The image of Ibrahim Pasha in Early Modern English drama: Thomas Kyd’s The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda”. Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences 18, 1, 29–38.
https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.443926

Hendry, Eka A. R. (2015) “Intrigues behind the harem wall: social, cultural and political construction of life behind the harem of Sultan Sulaiman”. Borneo Journal of Religious Studies 4, 169–179.
https://doi.org/10.24260/alalbab.v4i2.286

Imber, Colin (2009) The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: the structure of power. 2nd ed. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-01406-1

Jenkins, Hester (2018) Ibrahim Pasha: Grand Vizir of Suleiman the Magnificent. Perennial Press.

Knolles, Richard (1701) The generall historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that nation to the rising of the Othoman familie: with all the notable expedition of the Christian Princes against them. Together with the lives and conquests of the Othoman kings and emperours, London: Adam Islip. (1st ed. 1603, reprinted with additional notes in 1610, 1621, 1631, 1638, 1679, 1687–1700 (3 vols.), 1701 (abridged).).

Lai, K. S. (1988) The Mughal harem. Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Madar, H. (2011) Before the Odalisque: Renaissance representations of elite Ottoman women. Early Modern Women 6, 1–41.
https://doi.org/10.1086/EMW23617325

McJannet, Linda (2006) The Sultan speaks: dialogue in English plays and histories about the Ottoman Turks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mote, Frederick W. (2003) Imperial China 900–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1cbn3m5

Murphey, R. (2001) “Suleyman I and the conquest of Hungary: Ottoman manifest destiny or a delayed reaction to Charles V’s universalist vision?”. Journal of Early Modern History 5, 3, 197–221.
https://doi.org/10.1163/157006501X00177

Rogers, J. M. and R. M. Ward (1988) Suleyman the Magnificent. (British Museum Publications.) New York: Tabard Press.

Pierce, Leslie (1993) Imperial harem-wowen and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sahin, Kaya (2013) Empire and power in the reign of Suleyman: narrating the sixteenth-century Ottoman world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139540643

Said, Edward W. (2003) Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.

Sancar, Asli (2007) Ottoman women: myth and reality. Somerset, New Jersey: The Light Publications. 

Settle, Elkanah (1677) Ibrahim the illustrious Bassa a tragedy: acted at the Dukes Theatre. London: Printed by T. M. for W. Cademan. Available online at 
<http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A59320.0001.001>. Accessed on 30.10.2022.

Schick, I. (2004) “Representation of gender and sexuality in Ottoman and Turkish erotic literature”. The Turkish Studies Association Journal 28, 1-2, 81–103.

Spandounes, Theodore (1997) On the origin of the Ottoman Emperors. Donald M. Nicol, trans. and ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Shouket, Ahmad Tilwani (2020) “The Orient: villains in the plays of Marlow and Shakespeare”. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities12, 1, 1–13.
https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.35

Vitkus, Daniel (2000) Three Turk plays from Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wann, Louis (1915) “The Oriental in Elizabethan drama”. Modern Philology 12, 423–447.
https://doi.org/10.1086/386971

Yermolenko, Galina (2013) Roxolana in European literature, history and culture. Ashgate Publishing.

Yermolenko, Galina (2005) “Roxolana: ‘The Greatest Empresse of the East’”. Muslim World 95, 232–248.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.2005.00088.x

Back to Issue