Does this Tudor portrait reveal Othello’s inspiration?

The ambassador cast his piercing gaze over four centuries of history. Empires rose and fell, wars were won and lost. He saw it all, stern and unblinking.

His portrait was created in London in 1600, the artist probably being attracted by the exotic appearance – even in Elizabethan England – of the man’s robes, turban and beautifully decorated curves. simha or the sword.

The meeting of His Excellency Abd Al Wahid bin Mas’ud bin Muhammad bin ‘Anuri took place shortly after his arrival to represent the Saadian ruler of Morocco, Ahmed Al Mansur, at the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

Considered the oldest surviving painting of a Muslim in England, this portrait is also imbued with a certain enigma. We do not know who painted it or why.

The work disappeared from public view until it was auctioned by Christie’s in 1955 and is now part of the collection of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham, which recently reopened after a major renovation.

But the biggest unresolved question of all concerns the playwright William Shakespeare.

Within a year of the ambassador’s arrival in London, Shakespeare began work on one of his greatest tragedies. Othello has as its central character a Moor, as Christians of the time described the Muslims of the Maghreb, the western Arab countries that include Morocco.

Could the ambassador have inspired Shakespeare’s Othello, commander of the Venetian army and married to Desdemona, a beautiful Christian woman?

The idea has its supporters. After all, the painting hung on the walls of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, the playwright’s hometown, before being transferred to the Birmingham campus.

Actor Ben Kingsley used it as the basis of his costume when he played Othello in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1985 production directed by Terry Hands.

Professor Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute, believes it is highly likely that the playwright was aware of the ambassador, whose position in his own country was almost equivalent to that of prime minister.

The ambassador arrived at the port of Dover in the summer of 1600 on an English ship, the Eagle, and then travelled by road to London with a retinue of 15 people.

He and his team of diplomats have been seen around town, perhaps even visiting the newly opened Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays have been performed, including Hamlet.

“(The ambassador) spent most of the year in London,” Professor Dobson says. “He was the subject of much public discussion and Shakespeare was at court performing plays. There was a lot of talk about this man and Shakespeare probably saw him.”

On the surface, it was a simple trade mission, but the ambassador imagined much more than that in his relations with England. In 1588, twelve years earlier, Elizabeth II had defeated the Spanish Armada, and Catholic Spain and Protestant England were still at war.

Could the Queen be persuaded to form a military alliance with Morocco that would drive the Spanish out of southern Spain and restore Arab rule in what had been Muslim Andalusia, lost a century earlier?

Professor Dobson speculates that the painting may have been commissioned by the ambassador himself and left as a gift to the Queen and a permanent record of her visit. The fact that her age is clearly stated, which is unusual in Elizabethan portraits, may be significant, he believes.

“We know he was at the Accession Day tournament in 1600, an event to celebrate the fact that Elizabeth had been on the throne for 42 years. And here is this painting that shows him as having been alive for 42 years. It means my life, your reign, we can work together,” he said.

The plan ultimately failed. Elizabeth was 66 years old, her health was failing, and she had no desire to open a new front in the war. She died three years later, while her successor, James I, was making peace with Spain.

As for the bard’s inspiration, Professor Dobson notes that there is a general connection in that the play features an Eastern character who is associated with Islam, “which is very important in Othello in a way that is not present in other Shakespeare plays.”

But he strongly doubts that the character could be based on the ambassador. “The idea that he was the direct inspiration for Othello that won’t do at all. Othello “It’s a dramatization of an Italian story, which Shakespeare probably already knew. And Othello is clearly a sub-Saharan African rather than an Arab nobleman.”

The Moroccan and his entourage certainly had an impact on Elizabethan London. They seem to have been viewed with suspicion and a certain hostility.

The festival was observed by the Elizabethan historian John Stow, who noted that they “killed all their own meat in their house, as sheep, lambs, fowls, and such like, and turned their faces towards the east, when they killed anything.”

At least one member of the group, known at the time as the Barbarians, after the Barbary Coast of North Africa, appears to have died during the voyage.

John Chamberlain, whose letters provide a valuable record of this period, reported in October 1600 that “the Barbarians were at Court yesterday to take leave, and will shortly depart.”

Housed in a “special place” in Whitehall, according to Stow, the ambassador would have had at least two meetings with Elizabeth before returning home in February 1601.

Londoners were not the only ones to view him with suspicion. He came from a family of Muslims born in Spain, forcibly converted to Christianity, and then returned to Islam in Morocco. Considered a convert, many of his coreligionists did not trust him, and by his death, also in 1603, the project of rebuilding Al-Andalus was abandoned.

More recently, the ambassador, or at least his portrait, has once again traveled the seas. In 2022 and 2023, the painting was part of a major traveling exhibition, The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England, which has been presented at several major American institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Back last October, it was cleaned and lightly retouched. Painted in oils on three oak panels, these were supported from behind by a new foam block following the curve of the wood.

It was decided to reinstall it at the Barber Institute, a world-renowned collection that includes old masters by Botticelli, Rubens, Turner, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Magritte. The institute, which is undergoing a £10m (Dh46m) renovation, reopened its main galleries on 22 June.

Updated: July 5, 2024, 6:00 p.m.