is too clean, for Xarif ’s historical prototype was, in fact, a Turk, Moulay Mo-
hammed el-Kaim bi amer Allah; and Abd el-Malek had himself been raised
by Turks.^42 So much for black versus white, Negro versus Moor, Moor versus
Arabian, Arabian versus Turk.
Alcazar, which does not expose the Turkish edge of the Moors’ ancestry,
does not therefore go as far as the history behind it does in mixing cultural
identities. But Peele does complicate the revenge plot and the Presenter’s
moral codification of the Moors by emphasizing Abdelmelec’s crucial connec-
tion to the Turks—one which contrasts with Muly’s self-imposed isolation
and which suggests political orientation, in lieu of moral or racial markers, as
the defining axis of difference. In the opening act, what sets Abdelmelec apart
from Muly as the Moor most likely to succeed in the pre-Alcazar conflict is
his involvement in a worldly politics, instantiated by his long-standing al-
liance with the Turks and their leader “Great Amurath,” “Emperor of the
East” ( 1 Pro. 44 ). In introducing the act, the Presenter has already explained
that “in flying the fury” of Muly’s father who “wrong’d his brethren to install
his son,” Abdelmelec “served in field” under the “colours” of the Amurath’s fa-
ther, the “Sultan Solimon” ( 1 Pro. 45 – 48 ). When Abdelmelec appears, he an-
nounces his intent to “bear witness to the world” how he “adore[s] / The
sacred name of Amurath the Great” ( 1. 1. 10 – 11 ). Reciprocally, a Turkish Bassa
professes that he and his men have come to Morocco, under Amurath’s orders,
not as “mercenary men” but as “friends”—“to gratify and remunerate” Abdel-
melec’s “service in his father’s dangerous war,” “to perform, in view of all the
world, / The true office of right and royalty,” and to “make” Abdelmelec “Em-
peror of this Barbary” ( 1. 1. 22 – 24 , 26 – 28 , 31 ).
Though the Moor and the Turk—and, I would argue, the play—imagine
the alliance as something that “all the world” would not only watch but en-
dorse, editors and critics of the play have tended to take a darker view of this
interaction, portraying Amurath as a “cruel voluptuary” and Abdelmelec’s re-
lation to him as “slavish deference.”^43 In the 1590 s, Amurath’s reputation did
come under fire for waging what Leeds Barroll has called “a major land offen-
sive in central Europe.”^44 In Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV( 1590 – 91 ), for example,
Hal assures his brothers that, as the new king, he will “bear [their] cares”
( 5. 2. 58 ), proclaiming, “This is the English, not the Turkish court, / Not Amu-
rath an Amurath succeeds, / But Harry Harry” ( 5. 2. 46 – 48 ).^45 In the years be-
fore Alcazar, however, Elizabeth had herself engaged in sustained negotiations
with this “great Turke” (“Zuldan Murad Can”), gaining authorization for the
Levant Company to traffic in his “Imperiall dominions” (Hakluyt, 5 : 178 , 183 ,
32 chapter one