Asadova chexrangiz salim qizi saydullayev nuriddin zayniddin o‘G‘li 35 – O‘zbek theme: idealism in tamburlane the great- the work of christopher marlowe contents

The impact of Tamburlaine

The Elizabethan play, Tamburlaine, remains for the English readers as a great masterpiece. Elizabethans’ reaction to Tamburlaine’s defiance grew in time in plays other than Tamburlaine. Its immense success influenced the famous Elizabethan playwrights, such as Robert Greene, who imitated Marlowe in The Tragedy of Alphonsus King of Arogose (1592); other plays were George Whetstone’s The English Myrror (1586), Dekker’s Shoemaker Holiday (1600), Jonson’s Edward Hoe (1605), Shakespeare’s II Henry IV (1596), Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada (1670), and the Victorian, Christopher Row’s Tamburlaine (1702). They used to recite the line: “Holla ye pampered jades of Asia” which is in Tamburlaine (Part II, 4.3.1). However, they were of less merit.
T. S. Eliot states that the cultural heritage of a nation has a great value and impact over the construction of literature through ages (1915:12–13). In the twentieth century, some authors repeat the same image. For instance, Hilda Hookham’s Tamburlaine the Conqueror (1964) is the most detailed and up-to-date work addressed to the general reader. The fourteenth-century Arabic work of Ahmed ibn Arabshah’s Tamerlane, translated by J. H. Sanders (1936), and Harold Lamb, Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker (1928) are sources of the legends of Tamburlaine in the English library. Relevant and excellent chapters on the history of Tamerlane are displayed in René Grousset’s Empire of the Steppes (1939), translated into English in 1970, Richard N. Frye’s Iran (1954), Sir John Glubb’s The Lost Centuries (1967), and the Cambridge History of Iran (2010). The monster of Tamburlaine was used in London to frighten the foreign Protestant refugees from Europe. Some of the terrorists left a note on a church door in 1593, promising to murder all refugees and their children. It’s signed ‘Tamburlaine.’ This note goes on like that for dozens of lines from Tamburlaine:
Since words nor threats nor any other thing Can make you to avoid this certain ill,
We’ll cut your throats, in your temples praying Not Paris massacre so much blood did spill.⁶
For Orientalists, the Qur’ān is Muhammad’s own composition. Ziauddin Sardar analyses this hypothesis, saying: “From this assertion far-reaching historical, theological, literary and linguistic judgments are drawn which by sheer repetition are elevated to dignity of facts” (1999:52). To examine the allegation that the Prophet Muhammad wrote the Qur’ān, the Orientalists must examine how an illiterate man sat down in the first half of the seventh century “in his study to consult and ‘quote’ previous authors for the composition of the work known as the Qur’ān” (Sardar1999:52). Nevertheless, without a fair scholarly investigation, the Orientalists proceed to place the origin of the Qur’ān in Judaeo-Christian scriptures. Thus, in the Life of Muhammad, A. Guillaume affirms that Muhammad makes allusions to the Gospel. Montgomery Watt, too, in Islam and the Integration of Society puts forward that early Muslim works are infused with “quotations from the Bible” (1953:56). How is this possible, states Tibawi, “when there was no Arabic Bible to ‘quote’ from?” (1964:11).
Tamburlaine captures the audience of the play. He is represented as a Christian like his Englishmen. The English Christian Tamburlaine is historically and literarily entitled as the Qur’ān-burner in the English literature. The demonstration of Marlowe’s Qur’ān-burning hero has been performed on London stages several times. On November 24th, 2005, audiences at the Barbican in London did not see the Qur’ān being burnt, as Marlowe intended in this play. David Farr, who directed and adapted the play, was frightened that it would irritate the Muslims in Britain. Simon Reade, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, said that if they had not modified the original it “would have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions”.⁷ It would really be awful to represent the Qur’ān-burning scene again in London. Nowadays, Marlowe’s hero is heavily censored to avoid Muslims’ anger. In the Barbican theatre, the burning of the Qur’ān was smoothed over. It became just the burning of a heap of books. The key references to the Prophet Muhammad had been deleted, particularly in the passage where Tamburlaine says that he is “not worthy to be worshipped.” In the original play, Muhammad “remains in hell.”⁸ Today, the audience looks at Tamburlaine differently. They have closely explored the Islamic culture. Clifford Leech affirms that the English “interpretation of Tamburlaine, may partly depend on what they have learned about conquest, living in the twentieth century” (1964:7). Doctor Cleveland, a university professor, states on his page:“Who on Earth is crazy enough to burn the Koran?”
At the Barbican 2005 in London, the censorship over the Qur’ān-burning provoked criticism from British senior figures in the theatre and scholars, as well as religious leaders. For them, the story is of a shepherd-robber who defeats the king of Persia, the emperor of Turkey, and assuming himself as the “scourge of God”, burns the Qur’ān.⁹ The current meaning of the play defies the past criticism over the calm for the Qur’ān-burning scene. Terry Hands, director of the performance of Tamburlaine for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992, said, “I don’t believe you should interfere with any classic for reasons of religious or political correctness”.¹⁰ Tamburlaine’s appreciation of God’s holiness has worried one director, Peter Hall, in his production for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1976, modified the content to read: “The God that sits in heaven, if any god, Sits there alone, on earth there is none but me.”(Simkin 2000:95). Doctor Cleveland remarks that Western students know very well that the Qur’ān-burner is
Tamburlaine the Great in Marlowe.¹⁰