Accelerating with the launch of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (2003-….) recent studies on ballads that concentrate on Anglo-Ottoman relations have foregrounded how broadside ballads have either (re)produced or deflected popular anxieties surrounding Turks (See Matar and Sisneros). Using the word Turk as a shorthand for negative connotations, these ballads also reveal commentaries on broader social issues of early modern English people. There is an almost infinite number of such ballads, so this blog post will aim for a brief overview. 

Screenshot from EBBA

On the one hand, there are some ballads which criticise the social misconduct of English people for behaving like or “worse” than Turks. For instance, Edward Wollay’s ballad from 1571 argued that the English people have become like “the Turke” and instead of “workes” they pursue “lust and daliaunce” (lines 113-114). Likewise, Robert Sempil’s ballad from 1572 about the Huguenot Massacre describes Catherine de Medici as more “wickit” than the “Turk” (lines 40-41). In an anonymous ballad about the execution of Jesuit seminaries Edmund Campion, Ralphe Sherwin, and Thomas Bryan (1581), Catholics and the Pope are considered “worse then the Turke” (“A Triumph for true Subiects”, lines 45-46).

On the other, some ballads amplify real or imagined victories over Turks to deflect anxieties of conversion and conquest. For example, in a ballad from 1607 about an apocalyptic prophecy by a Jewish soothsayer Calebbe Shillocke, English people are assured that there shall be civil war in the Ottoman Empire and that the Turks will flee to Christians (lines 95-100). This Christian Utopian vision is extended in an undated ballad which is about a Christian utopia where everybody is true to his/her faith and the Turks are defeated and converted to Christianity (“O Maruelous tydynges”, lines 53-60). In a ballad from 1624, that utopia is turned into a fictionalised reality about an imagined victory of the English over Turkish fleets in Algiers in which the English supposedly chased Turkish pirates away into Türkiye. 

The one-directional approach in studies on ballads about Turks, however, disregards how Turks used the ballad form to comment on their Christian counterparts. While it is highly likely that there were as many ballads by Turks as English ballads on Turks, today only dozens have survived. I want to focus on one example, “Küffar” (Infidel(s)), which comments on the Ottoman victory in Eger, Hungary in 1596.

Küffar sanur hüccet almış Eğri’ye
Hali benzer nefes çekmiş Bengiye
Bire sorun Nemçeluyle Lehliye
Ne de çabuk unuttular Muhaçı

Yağız atın dikelince yelesi
Başımızdan esti gaz’a nefesi
Bre sorun nerde Nemçe Kölesi
Dayanır mı Zülfikare kellesi.

My English Translation:

The infidel thinks he has taken over Eger

He is as pale as an opium-smoker

Hey, ask the Austrian and the Polish

How soon they forgot Mohács.

When the black horse’s mane stood up

The breath of war blew from our heads

Hey, ask the Austrian slave

Can his head withstand the Zülfikar.

Amid the Ottoman-Austrian conflict, jokes are on the Austrians and their henchmen the Polish in this heroic ballad. In the first quatrain, it is interesting that in a time when the brownness or blackness of the Turk was used as a racial denominator, Turks similarly used paleness to racially discriminate against white people. The word “nefes” means smoking opium and “Bengi” is an opium smoker. Opium smokers are considered pale because of their narcotic addiction. Hence, likening white people to addicts underscores that Turks associate the paleness of white people with sickness rather than health, which is also quite interesting in regard to the association of whiteness with purity and colour with uncleanness. Reminding the Austrians of the victory of Mohács (1529) is both taking pride in Turkish history and using it as a haunting warning to exercise caution in politics.

In the second quatrain, the equestrian culture of the Turks along with the idea of holy war are conflated. In the final couplet, the persona question is purely rhetorical, in which the religiously connotated mythical two-bladed sword of the fourth caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib is used as a metonym which represents the political and religious superiority of the Turks over their Christian counterparts. Deeming Christians as “slaves” is not just reflective of the presence of white slaves in the Ottoman Empire but also deconstructs associations of non-whiteness and slavery.

To be brief, it is necessary to put the East and the West into conversation by giving equal voices to have a more comprehensive view of the intersections of race, politics, history and literature. In order to literally give voice, here is the audio of “Küffar” sung by the late bass artist Hasan Mutlucan (1926-2011) as part of his “Heroic Songs” album (1973):

Screenshot from YouTube

References

Anon. “A Triumph for true Subiects, and a Terrour …” London, 1581. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/36313

Anon. “Calebbe Shillocke, his Prophesie.” London, n.d. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20024

Anon. “Newes from Argeir…” London, [1624]. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20281

Anon. “O Maruelous tydynges both Wonders Old and New…” London, n.d. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/37094

Matar, Nabil. British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1663-1760. Leiden, 2014.

Sempill, Robert. “ane new ballet set out be ane Fugitiue…” Lekpriuik, 1572. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/37040

Sisneros, Katie Sue. “The Abhorred Name of Turk”: Muslims and the Politics of Identity in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads. Diss. University of Minnesota, 2016.

Wollay, Edward. “A new yeres Gyft, intituled, A playne Pathway…” London, 1571. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/32587

Note: In later versions, the cities Szigetvár, Timișoara and Udvari, Hungarian cities associated with the 1566 and 1552 victories, and the last outpost of Ottomans in Hungary, were added to the ballad.