Subject: History of England Culture Paper

“ISLAM AND TAMBURLAINE’S WORLD PICTURE”

Arranged by the 3rd Group:

Sofia Kumkelo 4517051003
Rinayanti 4517051005
Farange Anjelia 4517051016
Murtadhi Mu’tashim 4517051027
Nurfajriani 4517051029

BOSOWA UNIVERSITY MAKASSAR

2018
 Chapter I:
INTRODUCTION

Islam and Tumberlaine’s World-Picture refers to one of the Chapter in book titled
“A Companion To The Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in
The Era of Expansion.” This book explains about the Global Renaissance, a
period in European history, covering the span between the the 14th and 17th
centuries where the culture started to develop better. Renaissance was really
affecting European intellectual life in the early modern era. Renaissance’s
influence including literature, philosophy, art, music, politic, science, and religion.
There are couple aspects of “Islam And Tamburlaine’s World-Picture”
that we are going to discuss in this paper. Who is Tamburlaine? What’s the
World-Picture? And what’s the correlation between him, Islam, and the Global
Renaissance?
 Chapter II:
DISCUSSION

A. Tamburlaine’s Background
Tamburlaine’s real name was Timur which means “Iron” in the Chaghatay
language. Has born in Kesh (now known as Shakhrisabz, one of the city in
Uzbekistan). His father, Teragai, was the leader of Barlas clan, one the clan in the
Central Asia that first adopted Islam as their religion’s view. Timur was born with
nobility, and with a great guidance from his father, in his early twenty, he was not
only active in the field but also diligent Al-Qur’an reader. Few years later he
would be involved in many wars and expeditions.
Timur is regarded as a military genius, and as a brilliant tactician with an
uncanny ability to work within a highly fluid political structure to win and
maintain a loyal following of nomads during his rule in Central Asia. He was also
considered extraordinarily intelligent – not only intuitively but also intellectually.
In Samarkand and his many travels, Timur, under the guidance of distinguished
scholars, was able to learn the Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish languages
(according to Ahmad ibn Arabshah, Timur could not speak Arabic). More
importantly, Timur was characterized as an opportunist. Taking advantage of his
Turco-Mongolian heritage, Timur frequently used either the Islamic religion or
the law and traditions of the Mongol Empire to achieve his military goals or
domestic political aims. Timur was a learned king, and enjoyed the company of
scholars; he was tolerant and generous to them. His bright career in military had
him build Timurid Dynasty in the central Asia. His bravery and strength in
expansion and leadership contributed greatly in development of Islam at the
Renaissance period.
As Timur’s power grows in the central Asia, his ambition and cruelty also
does grow. For every expansion, he would build a monument that was built from
his enemy’s skeletons. He even once ordered 2000 war prisoner to be buried alive
under bricks and cement. But even as the great conquerer, Timur could not claim
the supreme title of the Islamic world, Kalifah, because the "office was limited to
the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad". Therefore, Timur reacted to
the challenge by creating a myth and image of himself as a "supernatural personal
power" ordained by God. Since Timur had a successful career as a conqueror, it
was easy to justify his rule as ordained and favored by God since no ordinary man
could be a possessor of such good fortune that resistance would be seen as
opposing the will of God. Moreover, the Islamic notion that military and political
success was the result of Allah's favor had long been successfully exploited by
earlier rulers. Therefore, Timur's assertions would not have seemed unbelievable
to fellow Islamic people.

B. Adapted into Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine’s The Great

Timur’s story would later be adapted into a play by Christopher Marlowe, titled
“Tamburlaine the Great.” It has two parts and is loosely based on the life of the
Central Asian emperor, Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame). Written in 1587 or
1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away
from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a
new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual
complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be
considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the
University Wits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes
of the bombast and ambition of Tamburlaine's language can be found in English
plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642. While Tamburlaine
is considered inferior to the great tragedies of the late-Elizabethan and early-
Jacobean period, its significance in creating a stock of themes and, especially, in
demonstrating the potential of blank verse in drama, is still acknowledged.
Whereas the real Timur was of Turkic-Mongolian ancestry and belonged to the
nobility, for dramatic purposes Marlowe depicts him as a Scythian shepherd who
rises to the rank of emperor. Marlowe even remove all of the Tamburlaine’s ties
to his religion, Islam. There is almost no mention of Islam in this play. In this ear,
Islam may have been more profoundly misrepresented still. The question of
misrepresentation is rendered more complex still by the way in which
representation itself was at stake between Christianity and Islam at the world
large.
Tamburlaine’s the Great tells the story of the Great Tamburlaine, a military genius
who thrived and became the conqueror of the Central Asia but later turned into
tyrant.
Part 1 opens in Persepolis. The Persian emperor, Mycetes, dispatches troops to
dispose of Tamburlaine, a Scythian shepherd and, at that point, a nomadic bandit.
In the same scene, Mycetes' brother Cosroe plots to overthrow Mycetes and
assume the throne.

The scene shifts to Scythia, where Tamburlaine is shown wooing, capturing, and
winning Zenocrate, the daughter of the Egyptian king. Confronted by Mycetes'
soldiers, he persuades first the soldiers and then Cosroe to join him in a fight
against Mycetes. Although he promises Cosroe the Persian throne, Tamburlaine
reneges on this promise and, after defeating Mycetes, takes personal control of the
Persian Empire.

Now a powerful figure, Tamburlaine turns his attention to Bajazeth, emperor of

the Turks. He defeats Bajazeth and his tributary kings, capturing the emperor and
his wife Zabina. The victorious Tamburlaine keeps the defeated ruler in a cage
and feeds him scraps from his table, releasing Bajazeth only to use him as a
footstool. Bajazeth later kills himself on stage by bashing his head against the bars
upon hearing of Tamburlaine's next victory. Upon finding his body, Zabina does
likewise.
After conquering Africa and naming himself emperor of that continent,
Tamburlaine sets his eyes on Damascus, a target which places the Egyptian sultan,
his father-in-law, directly in his path. Zenocrate pleads with her husband to spare
her father. He complies, instead making the sultan a tributary king. The play ends
with the wedding of Tamburlaine and Zenocrate, who is crowned Empress of
Persia.
In Part 2, Tamburlaine grooms his sons to be conquerors in his wake as he
continues to attack neighbouring kingdoms. His oldest son, Calyphas, preferring
to stay by his mother's side and not risk death, incurs Tamburlaine's wrath.
Meanwhile, the son of Bajazeth, Callapine, escapes from Tamburlaine's jail and
gathers a group of tributary kings to his side, planning to avenge his father.
Callapine and Tamburlaine meet in battle, where Tamburlaine is victorious. But
finding that Calyphas remained in his tent during the battle, Tamburlaine kills him
in anger. Tamburlaine then forces the defeated kings to pull his chariot to his next
battlefield, declaring,

Holla ye pampered jades of Asia!

What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day

Upon reaching Babylon, which holds out against him, Tamburlaine displays
further acts of extravagant savagery. When the governor of the city attempts to
save his life in return for revealing the city treasury, Tamburlaine has him hung
from the city walls and shot. He orders the inhabitants—men, women, and
children—to be bound and thrown into a nearby lake. Lastly, Tamburlaine
scornfully burns a copy of the Qur'an and claims to be greater than God. In the
final act, he becomes ill but manages to defeat one more foe before he dies. He
bids his sons to conquer the remainder of the earth as he departs life.

C. Tamburlaine’s World-Picture
Timur was born in the global renaissance era, where culture and art started to
develop in every aspect of life. But when people started to create art through
statue and human/animal portrait, the same cannot also be applied to Tamburlaine
and his people. As muslim, creating image of people and animals in general are
forbidden. According to to one tradition in hadith, this is because the image maker
or painter tries to appropriate God’s creative power in depicting living things.
Muhammad once said that painters would receive a harsher punishment than
others on the day of judgement. Another saying holds that in Hell, painter will be
commanded to breathe life into the images he has made, and will fail. These
traditions represent a hardening of earlier attitudes toward painting in Islam. This
traditions are called “Aniconism” by the historians.
It is image of living beings that are banned, not of inanimate objects. Maps or
worlds-images on any kind are not in question, and map-making thrived under
Islam. Timur himself was very active in the project of world mapping. Damascus
is the first place to be reduced and reinscribed by the conqueror’s sword and it
then usurp the role of Jerusalem as predetermined central point of the three
continent earth on a traditional T-in-O mappamundi, and mark the perpendicular
or initial meridian of longitude on the detailed fifteenth century world map
derived from ptolemy that replaced the medieval model. Map makers at that time
also fashioned globes, avoiding distortion by reproducing the earth’s features
accurately o spherical surface. But, as the cartographic theorist Christian Jacobs
points out, terrestrial globes entail visual problems of their own. If a globe is
small, its geographical detail is hard to see and label; if large, “its gigantism
exceeds the capacity of the symbol gaze.” This is why the ideal geography lesson
began with the globe but moved quickly to the manageable flat surfaces of charts
and books.
 Chapter III:
CONCLUSION

In the renaissance era, Islam started to enter Central Asia and the Europe, but was
still misrepresented in the art area because of the strictness of its view itself or the
representation that it stake between Islam and Christianity. One of the example is
Christopher Marlowe’s play: Tamburlaine’s The Great which completely removed
Timur’s islamic descendant and background in its play.
In the renaissance era, Islam triumphed in the map making project. It developed
side by side with Islam expansion in the era of Timur while conquering the
Central Asia. Damascus was the first place to be reduced and reinscribed by the
conqueror’s sword and it then usurp the role of Jerusalem as predetermined
central point of the three continent earth on a traditional T-in-O mappamundi, the
ancestor of today’s map.
 REFERENCEE

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburlaine
https://www.kaskus.co.id/thread/000000000000000009178411/timurlenk--
pendiri-dinasti-timurid/
“A Companion To The Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in
The Era of Expansion.” by Michael Hattaway