Marlowe’s Bayazid drew on Foxe’s 1570 Turkish history rooted in medieval Church theology.

Evidence

However, before turning our attention to him, there is the Ottoman sultan Bayazid, who was the first portrayal of an Ottoman sultan on the stage. He, too, is a monster, albeit a less complex one than Tamburlaine. Bayazid is described as a member of the “detestable and cursed sect of Islam,” who appeals to his “god” Mahomet—a monster with “purple blood,” which courses through the veins of all Turks. Bajazet, the more prominent Turkish character in Marlowe’s drama (the “Great Turk”), is also a dehumanized character, a member of the damned and vile race of Turks. Bajazet is unapologetically Muslim; he swears by “Mahomet’s sepulcher, And by the holy Alcoran,” and, like an animal, is put in a cage by Tamburlaine. In contrast, Tamburlaine swears his allegiance to his sword, “that conquered Persia.” In formulating these characters, Marlowe was likely influenced by the account of Turkish history penned by John Foxe, published in 1570 and again in 1576 and 1583, before the publication of Tamburlaine. Foxe relies on medieval theology, and specifically the history of the Church, in his account of the Turks. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete evidence of direct source-chain: medieval Church theology into Foxe’s history into Marlowe’s drama — exactly the ‘manufactured image’ causal chain the reader is tracing.
• SEED: An essay tracing a single monster-image across its actual transmission chain — from medieval polemic to Foxe’s history to the Elizabethan stage — demonstrating that the image was inherited, not observed.