Islam in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great

This paper seeks to present a providential approach to Tamburlaine. This approach is justified in terms of divine punishment which guilty figures suffer as a result of their misdeeds. When facing misfortune or penalty. Characters supplicate to different divine power: The Persian supplicate to Jove, the Moslem Turks supplicate to the prophet Muhammad, and the Christians appeal to Christ. But Tamburlaine, who introduced himself as the Scourge of God, always supplicates to generalized God. Through its invocation of Jove, the play combines these divine forces into a generalized God. It is this generalized God who punished Tamburlaine for burning the holy Koran and other Islamic texts. Tamburlaine's sudden sickness in the wake if his sacrilegious action will be seen as showing Gods refutation of Tamburlaine's assertion that in vain…. Men worship Mahomet. This refutation emphasizes the plays defense of Islam, and shows the play to be a tragedy of divine justice.