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

Is that the better entertainment? Or the Tree of Zaqqum?

For We have truly

Made it (as) a trial
For the wrong-doers.

62. 
    For it is a tree
    

That springs out
Of the bottom of Hell-fire:

62. 
    The shoots of its fruit-stalks Are like the heads
    

Of devils. (Ali 1997:1350–1351)
The Prophet Muhammad is established with the focus on the Muslim characters’ faith in him. Tamburlaine’s soul is full of worship, of power, which has been immortalized in many splendid passages and scenes like those of Hercules (Waith 1964:89). Tamburlaine is primarily hedonistic. He has an enormous appetite for power and violence. His immorality denies and breaches all human and religious teachings. His evil nature is clear when he laughs at the suffering of his victims. Mass killings and violations are unacceptable to a simple man. Tamburlaine has a vision of greatness denied by earthly and heavenly laws. He seeks freedom by being a king above the law. Marlowe’s conception is aided by opportunities for the stage spectacle which seems to have been as much to his taste as his audience’s. In Tamburlaine, the concept is a royal pageantry and colourful and bloody displays of sovereignty.
Ambition is a characteristic feature in Marlowe’s portrait of Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine is a workaholic. He enjoys no rest. He is voraciously greedy for glory. He tests himself in furious, fanatic and bloody deeds, and dreams of his own empire. He bestows his lieutenants to leave some kingdoms in Africa and Arabia unconquered. Tamburlaine says: “Shall I die, and this unconquered” (Part II, V.iii.150). Tamburlaine’s pride and his accomplishment are in ironical contrast. In an early scene Usumcasane says: “To be a king, is half to be a god”, and Theridamas replies, “A god is not so glorious as a king” (Part I, II.V.51–61), but soon enough Tamburlaine turns from the scourge of god to greater than god. Theridamas, by act IV, is amazed by Tamburlaine’s speech: And thou shall see a man greater than Mahomet,
And makes the mighty god of arms his slave. (Part II.III.iv.46–53)
Subsequently, Marlowe himself shows Tamburlaine as a demigod.
Tamburlaine’s riches help create the illusion that he is godly (Burnett 2004:128). It is only his death that shows he does not control his fate. He threatens the world, earth and heaven, with his conquering sword and sheer flamboyance. Afsour Mohammed Hussain’s judgment is that “in choosing the story of Tamburlaine, Marlowe was capitalizing on public sentiment” (Oueijan 1996:13).
Tamburlaine’s speedy ascent to power shows his smart exploitation of the rivalries at the decadent Persian court. He achieves the apex of his power by his conquest of Bajazeth, the Great Turk whom he employs, literally, as his footstool and carries about in an iron cage. Moreover, as Chew says: “the story became one of the most popular incidents in European accounts of the legendary Scythian conqueror” (Chew 1937:470). When Tamburlaine trod on Bajazeth’s throne to ascend it, Marlowe made the fall greater, grim and humorous. He reminds Elizabethans of the affair of 1402. Like this event, Norman Daniel finds that Elizabethan drama contained a European response to the Turkish danger (Daniel 1960:499). Bajazeth and his wife bitterly insult his fortunes by attacking his deity, represented in the Prophet Muhammad – ‘O Mahomet! O sleepy Mahomet!’Sultan Bajazeth and his wife Zabina viciously curse the Prophet ‘Mahomet’ (Part I,
III.iii.270).
Numerous Muslim characters, such as Zabina in Tamburlaine, retract against Islam declaring: “there left no Mahomet, no God” (Part I, IV.iv, 290–2). In this image, they come out as unfaithful and defiant and shaky worshippers. Bajazeth pronounces the doubts of other ordinary characters in the play. This helps to underline in the production the barbarous cruelty in the scene. “Dost thou think that Mahomet will suffer this?” And “If his highness would let them be fed it would do them more good” (V, ii, 176). This and Bajazeth’s suicide by beating his head against the bars of the cage, was obviously regarded as the culmination of the first part. In The Jew of Malta, the epithet of Ithimore about the Turks is significant because it shows the tendency to connect the conventional evilness of Turks with a damage of European Machiavellianism (Chew 1937:142). It is evident when Ithimore depicts his evil deeds in burning Christian villages and his ill-treatments with Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem.
Tamburlaine’s love for Zenocrate spares her father from death and being added to the pile of corpses in Tamburlaine’s over-lordship in the Orient. His cruelty is recognized by Zenocrate whose love excuses his massive destruction. Similarly, when she laments over the bodies of the emperor and empress, she acknowledges Tamburlaine’s pride, but prays to Jove and Mahomet to pardon him. This source of Jove as the god of Muslims is medieval. There is also a royal fight between the two queens, Zabina and Zenocrate. With the death of her husband, King Bajazeth, Zabinais anguished to the core and eventually ends her own life by banging her head against the bars of the cage in which her husband was kept. She, like her husband, insults the Prophet Muhammad. She depicts him as a drowsy god called ‘Mahomet’. In portraying Mohammad as the God of Muslims, Marlowe subscribed to the wilful ignorance of the Western scholars of the medieval era who, out of gross disregard for genuine information about Islam, maintained and propagated that Muslims took Mohammad as their God. The speeches of Zabina and Bajazeth against ‘Mahomet’ seem funny to spectators. The expressions are hopeless and blasphemous for Islamic faith. It is a convincing evidence that supports the Christian opinion on Islam. Marlowe has perfectly exhausted the historical theme of Tamburlaine. The same picture is echoed from the medieval epic The Song of Roland, written by Cretien de Troyes around 1130. It is a crusaded scene of a holy war between the Christian Franks and the Muslim Saracens. A Spanish Muslim Saracen soldier says: