Day of the Black Tents

Tamerlan. Tamerlan. Tamerlan.

Since shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15th, that name has punched its way into the consciousness of the American public. The elder bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, carried the name of a 14th-century Scythian shepherd (the region is in present-day Uzbekistan) who rose to take tyrannical control of a vast realm and branded his name as the "Scourge of God" on the backs of his defeated enemies.

In his early years as a playwright, William Shakespeare's rival Christopher Marlowe was on a roll, and with good reason: his play Tamburlaine the Great had created such a sensation among theater audiences in London that Marlowe was prompted to write a second, inevitably less exciting Part 2.

Entered in London's Stationers' Register in 1590, the first part had sent shock waves through London's fledgling industry of stagecraft. Marlowe's Tamburlaine is an exotic villain from the mysterious East, who climbs to the summit of conquest and descends into the abyss of cruelty yet never gets his just deserts. Quite to the contrary, he thrives. He howls in pleasure at the humiliation of his foes and insatiably hungers for new forms of terror.

He uses one defeated Turkish king as a human footstool, others to draw his chariot with bits in their mouths. When laying siege to a city, he pitches white tents outside its walls, signifying to its inhabitants that they can surrender without reprisal. After a day, red tents are put up, indicating that while the citizens might still see mercy, their governors will not.

"On the third day, when the black tents go up, the point of no return has passed, and all are subject to fire, sword, and rape," noted George Wilbur Meyer of Tulane University in an essay on Marlowe's  sinister protagonist. Undoubtedly, the character's origins fascinated the English theater-going public: here was a despot amidst the dust storms of Samarkand who out-viced the Vice of the medieval English morality plays. As Christopher Marlowe must have duly noted, Londoners seemed fascinated by all things Eastern.

That fascination extended to furnishings in upscale English homes well before Shakespeare's birth in 1564. Pictured above, in the collection of Agecroft Hall, is an English "Turkey work" pillow, made c1575 of wool, linen, and hemp in a Turkish design of the sort that had become fashionable by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout much of Europe. Cardinal Wolsey is often credited with popularizing the use of items of Turkish style or origin in England during his ascendancy as the right-hand man of King Henry VIII. Interestingly, woven goods from the Levant were often regarded as too valuable to be used under foot as rugs in most households: they were more often used to adorn tables, chairs, and other furniture.

Like Marlowe's Tamburlaine, this Turkey work had the allure of exoticism: the Ottoman Turks with their Islamic faith had captured Constantinople in 1453 and were ultimately stopped only at the gates of Vienna. All of Western Europe felt threatened yet in some ways intrigued by this aggrandizing culture from the East. Then, as now, the force of Islam proved difficult to ignore.