Sinan: A Muslim Converts in Elizabethan England

My lecture will focus on the baptising of a Muslim that took place in London in 1586, the first event of its kind.  I will use the ceremony and surrounding circumstances to consider wider questions about the nature of conversion and about early modern English attitudes to ‘Mahometanism’.  At the core of the lecture is a dilemma – when the English authorities were confronted with this individual and his desire to convert, what did they do?  How might one go about organising the first baptism of a Muslim in Elizabethan England?

This lecture is the third in a series entitled Cultural Encounters: Travel, Religion, and Identity in the Early Modern World, which explores the findings and implications of the research coming out of the Conversion Narratives in Early Modern Europe project.

Cultural Encounters poster (PDF , 738kb)