William Percy's Mahomet and His Heaven
Regular price
€198.40
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
Arabia Sitiens
Category=ATD
Category=DSB
Category=DSG
Category=NHB
Christian Turned Turk
early modern drama
East Indies
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
George Sandys
Gold Wings
Ho Ho
Huntington Copy
Huntington Manuscript
Islamic Heaven
Islamic representation
Leo Africanus
Lytell Treatyse
Mahomet's Tomb
Mahomet’s Tomb
Medieval Polemic
Mr Porter
Murad III
occult in literature
Poetry
Pomponius Mela
portrayal of Muhammad in English theatre
race and religion studies
religious polemic
Renaissance stagecraft
Robert Greene
Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas's Purchas
Samuel Purchas’s Purchas
Summa Totius Haeresis Saracenorum
Syon House
Verse Lines
Wee Doe
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9780754654063
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jun 2006
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
William Percy's Mahomet and His Heaven (1601) is extraordinary. Not only is it the only early modern play purportedly based upon the Qur'an, but it is also the first to place the Prophet Muhammad on the stage. While there existed a remarkable range of texts concerning Islamic characters and themes in Renaissance England, from chronicles and pamphlets to popular drama, the publication of this edition of Mahomet and His Heaven represents a major step forward in the study of Islam on the early modern stage. Roughly contemporary with Shakespeare's Othello, William Percy makes the remarkable and potentially highly provocative gesture of locating the Prophet as its central character, presiding over an apocalyptic drought to chastise the sins of mankind. The play takes place in around the mosques of 'Medina' and the action mirrors early Christian 'translations' of the Qur'an, the Islamic holy text that was rarely available in England at the time. Furthermore, the play provides a fascinating insight into the way that Islamic characters were portrayed on the early modern stage, containing as it does remarkably detailed stage directions, stipulating for example that the Prophet wears 'all greene and greene his Turban' and that his Angels are 'rainbow powdered'. Such details offer an entirely new perspective upon this aspect of early modern stagecraft. Matthew Dimmock presents here the play in its entirety, with a critical introduction which introduces some of its key themes, and places it in a textual and social context. A section of detailed explanatory scholarly notes follow the play, containing a full translation of the short Latin sections and references to the many political and literary parallels. This book should be required reading for historians, literary scholars and students dealing with notions of race, religion, magic, astrology and stagecraft in early modern England.
Dr Matthew Dimmock is Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. His previous publications include New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2005) and Cultural Encounters Between East and West, 1453-1699 (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), co-edited with Matthew Birchwood. He is currently working on a book-length study of the Prophet Muhammad in Christian thought and iconography.
