S6: E3: Lubaaba Al‑Azami on Travel and Exchanges between India and England

Lubaaba Al‑Azami discusses her book, Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World

For a complete episode transcript, http://www.womenandshakespeare.com

Lubaaba's Book: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/lubaaba-al-azami/travellers-in-the-golden-realm/9781529371321/

Interviewer: Varsha Panjwani
Guest: Lubaaba Al‑Azami

Producer: Yu-Kuan Miao
Transcript: Benjamin Poore
Artwork: Wenqi Wan

Suggested Citation:  Al‑Azami, Lubaaba in conversation with Panjwani, Varsha (2026). Lubaaba Al‑Azami on Travel and Exchanges between India and England. Women & Shakespeare [podcast], Series 6, Ep.3. http://womenandshakespeare.com/

Insta: earlymoderndoc
Email: earlymoderndoc@gmail.com

Transcript

*Glass Shatter*  

Varsha: Hello, dear listeners and welcome to Women & Shakespeare. I'm your host, Dr. Varsha Panjwani, and I wish you a very happy New Year. I hope it began on the right note. Well, and if it didn't, there are still 11 months for the year to redeem itself. I began my new year in India. I'm back in London now, but I move between England and India often because in many, many ways I belong to both these worlds.

Varsha: That's why reading Lubaaba Al-Azami’s book, Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World, felt specially meaningful. It offered me a history of this very journey, England to India, India to England, of all the people who [00:01:00] have made these crossings long before us, weaving together different stories, cultures, knitting identities.

Varsha: It dawned on me that this is where my story began years before I was born to undertake the journey myself. So I knew that I had to talk to her. Dr. Lubaaba Al-Azami is a cultural historian and Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London, specialising in early modern England's engagements with the Islamic world.

Varsha: Her research, teaching and public scholarship expand the global dimensions of Renaissance Studies. Lubaaba joined me and my students for a conversation, and that is where we recorded this episode. And as you'll hear, Travellers in the Golden Realm is the heart of our discussion today.

Varsha: Lubaaba, I'm very [00:02:00] excited to have you on the podcast. Welcome to Women & Shakespeare. 

Lubaaba: Thank you very much for having me. It's wonderful to be here. Wonderful to meet the students, and I'm looking forward to discussing the journeys between England and India. 

Varsha: So we have a standard question that we ask all our guests on this podcast, and also my student who's producing today, Ken Miao wanted to know when did you first encounter Shakespeare, and what was the nature of that encounter?

Lubaaba: I think perhaps for many people who have been educated in a Western education curriculum, whether that's in the West or beyond, we often encounter it at school. So I encountered Shakespeare first at school. But that was a British school in the Middle East. So it wasn't actually within England.

Lubaaba: And the first play that I encountered was A Midsummer Night's Dream. And at the time I found it fabulous because the teachers really engaged with the magic of it, and that's quite entertaining, particularly for like a 14-year-old who's encountering Shakespeare, which is material from four or five [00:03:00] centuries hence.

Lubaaba: The language is very different, but it really leaned into the fantasy of it. And so, part of that experience was also engaging in a class performance, which was quite fun. So that was my first encounter with Shakespeare. 

Varsha: And you say Middle East, where? 

Lubaaba: So that was in Saudi Arabia. I spent a few years of my childhood there. My parents were working there, and so I attended school there for a few years and we encountered Shakespeare. 

Varsha: I definitely approve of Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Lubaaba: Yes. Big fan. 

Varsha: Big fan. You are talking here about multiple coordinates and multiple journeys and different places that you've called home. And you describe yourself as a cultural historian specializing in the global Renaissance. So what does it mean to study the global Renaissance?

Lubaaba: I think the Renaissance, traditionally when we've spoken about the Renaissance, it's often been centred on Western Europe and particularly Italy.

Lubaaba: So Italy is the space where it's considered that the Renaissance sort of started, this revival of the classics, arts, architecture, [00:04:00] poetry, all of that. Whereas, the reality is that period was a global period. And one of the marks of the global Renaissance was of course, the age of exploration when Western Europe was reaching out to the wider world on an unprecedented scale.

Lubaaba: So that included the voyage of Columbus across the Atlantic. He was looking for India, of course, was not looking for the Americas, and he stumbled across the Americas. And hence we got the American Indian. That includes the voyage of Vasco da Gama around the continent of Africa, Europe seeking a direct voyage to India.

Lubaaba: And the 15th century was consumed by this European desire, Western European desire, specifically to reach India. And so when I say the global Renaissance, I'm leaning into that element because this was a period of unprecedented globality for Europe as well as the wider world, because Europe was reaching out to the wider world on an unprecedented scale.

Lubaaba: Whether the wider world is reaching out back to Europe is a different discussion and there are reasons and dynamics for that. But of course, also these travels and encounters were emerging in the literature and the architecture and [00:05:00] the food cultures and the textiles of Europe as well.

Lubaaba: So it was very much enriching the Renaissance. And I think for too long we've looked at the Renaissance in a very Eurocentric lens. So by global Renaissance, I'm leaning into the fact that this was a global phenomenon and a globalised phenomenon. And so that's really what I'm trying to draw attention to and including in the works of Shakespeare, the many things that were impacted by this travel and trade and encounter was, of course, you know, the writings of the Bard himself.

Varsha: I totally agree. I'm really glad that we'll get our teeth sunk into this today. You have written an unputdownable book. I really mean that because every time I get to the end of the chapter I'm like, oh, no, one more. 

Varsha: So Travellers in the Golden Realm: How Mughal India Connected England to the World. Might you unpack this title for us? How do you [00:06:00] define the golden realm and is that something to do with how the English saw Mughal India?

Lubaaba: I'm really glad that you found the book so engaging and exciting. I had a great deal of fun researching it and writing it, but just the stories themselves, they're just such fabulous stories, and particularly to travel that far in this time when travel is not easy. You had to be a particular kind of crazy person.

Lubaaba: And so that's why this history is populated by these fun and funky and wild characters, and that's what makes parts of it exciting. In terms of the golden realm. So, in the early modern world, India – and this was not just from the early modern world, it reaches back into the medieval period and into the classical period – India was really seen as the seat of wealth and the seat of richness.

Lubaaba: And that's why, as I mentioned, throughout the 15th century, Western Europeans were so keen on voyaging direct to India, because they wanted to trade in these riches. So in that sense, India was very much a golden realm in the Western European imagination for [00:07:00] centuries.

Lubaaba: And to this day, a lot of the language that we use still leans into this idea of India being rich. When we say, you know, a mogul. A mogul is someone who's wildly wealthy and powerful, like a media mogul or a business mogul. And mogul, of course, comes from India, from the Mughal Empire. So even in contemporary times, our language is still framed by this idea of India as a land of riches.

Lubaaba: Now also, it's probably worth mentioning that when we're talking about India in the early modern period, the Indian Ocean region was India. It wasn't just India as we know it today, but it included anything east of South Africa, anything east of the Cape of Good Hope. So this whole region was the source of a great deal of riches.

Lubaaba: But of course, a lot of it was also centred in key areas. So that included Mughal India, which is the region I'm writing about, and Mughal India included what is today Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, as well as parts of Afghanistan. 

Lubaaba: But also it included Indonesia, right? And again, Indonesia, that term ‘ind’ is also evocative of the idea of, this is India as well, [00:08:00] and it also included regions such as Persia. But so the root of it all is this sense that this region is a source of riches in that time. And of course it was. And Mughal India was the second wealthiest empire in the world, second only to Ming China. By 1700, it had overtaken China as well.

Lubaaba: Its GDP exceeded the entirety of Western Europe, so it was wildly wealthy. And one of the reasons that Europeans were so keen to get to India or this entire region known as India, was because they wanted spices. And spices were the equivalent of crude oil at the time. So it was like really the key commodity of riches of this time.

Lubaaba: So it was all very much leaning into this idea of India as the land of wealth. So it's this golden realm. 

Varsha: Now that we are on the question of spices, I do want you to elaborate on that because when I first read Midsummer Night's Dream all those years ago in India and [00:09:00] because I was in India, I was intrigued by the fairy queen Titania mentioning ‘the spiced Indian air’.

Varsha: And my first thought was, well, how did Shakespeare know that Indian air was spiced? Because we don't actually learn about all of this history at school. I later discovered the trade networks of Shakespeare's time that you're talking about, and what a difference they were making in the cuisine of England already.

Varsha: Thank God for that. 

Lubaaba: Thank God for that. 

Varsha: So could you share with our listeners what the spice trade looked like during that period?

Lubaaba: Absolutely. And that particular passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a really great example of how the global Renaissance was impacting literature, right?

Lubaaba: So the ‘spiced Indian air’, and again, even when I studied A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school, that particular passage was not unpacked. And it just seemed like a sort of odd anomaly, and it seemed like an anomaly because we weren't taught that this period was so globally connected. That's why it seemed [00:10:00] like a sort of throwaway comment, whereas it carries a lot more deep meaning in that.

Lubaaba: And so in this period, even prior to this period, there was a lot of travel and trade taking place with the Indian Ocean region, but it was taking place over land, so via the Silk Route. And what often would happen is that Arab traders would trade in the Indian Ocean region.

Lubaaba: Then they'd come up the Persian Gulf or come up the Arabian Sea, and then they'd go via the Mediterranean region – north Africa, I'm thinking about Egypt and Syria and these regions – where you'd have Venetian traders come over and then trade and then take it onto Europe. And what happened was when things are happening overland and through so many intermediaries, it just buffeted the price up, right?

Lubaaba: It made it super, super expensive so that by the time actually reaches Europe, it's only the monarchs who can really afford this stuff. You have spiced wines and that kind of thing. But the thing with spice is that it's not just about the culinary value, the fact that it makes things taste better and it also preserves food over the winter period when you have less farming and that [00:11:00] sort of thing. But also it had medicinal value, so it was very much key to treatments as well. So getting access to the spices and getting access to it at affordable rates was really what propelled the spice trade. 

Lubaaba: So it was really about, ‘right, we need to bypass the Arab traders. They're making too much money out of us’. So that's essentially what happened. And that gave birth to the century-long desire and voyages that went a bit further around Africa, a bit further around Africa, a bit further around Africa. 

Lubaaba: In the meantime, you had the Northwest Passage going on. You have, you had voyages of people trying to find India via the Northwest Passage. You had Columbus going east based on classical literatures that suggested that, well, you know, you can the world is round. We finally accepted that. So if we were to voyage west, we'd go all the way round and we'd come to the Indian Ocean.

Lubaaba: And so you had this entire century of obsessive travel to the spice regions of India. And that's really what triggered it. And these as I said, prior to it, it was over land. So, there were parts of it which were sort of maritime, so they'd cross the Mediterranean.

Lubaaba: And then [00:12:00] on this end, you've got people crossing the Indian Ocean, crossing the Persian Gulf from that region. But otherwise, it was largely happening over land. Whereas the maritime voyage, it was direct, but it was also very risky. Right? 

Lubaaba: So, for example an East India Company voyage might set off in like. February, March, and then by the time it's reached, it's September, October. So it's taken many months. Along the way, you know, you've got scurvy, piracy, storms, all kinds of things that could take you out, right? So, it was a very perilous journey, but such was the allure of spice and the potential for wild amounts of profit that people still did it, and people were still keen to risk their life and everything just to reach that.

Varsha: Yeah. It provided huge profits that made people really rich, right? So, yeah, so allure of medicine, food, but also allure of lots of money, I think, to be made.

Lubaaba: Lots and lots of money. I mean, if we think of some of the spices of this time. There's stuff that many [00:13:00] average kitchen cupboards now hold and we kind of take it for granted.

Lubaaba: But the amount of investment and effort that went to get these to our cupboards. So things like cloves and mace and cardamon and cinnamon. Pepper. You know, people talk about salt and pepper as the very basic of spices. Pepper came from Sri Lanka and the Philippines and Indonesia. So there wasn't even pepper here. It was literally boiling food and putting salt on it, right? 

Varsha: Oh dear. 

Lubaaba: So can you imagine like, you know, so it's very big favours have been done by the spice traders of the Renaissance, but these kind of spices, which, they fill my cupboard certainly, but they'll fill any South Asian person’s cupboard.

Lubaaba: But also non South Asian people, lots of people use these spices. And we're part of that story of spice that began in this very early period and now we're just, we are basically enjoying the fruits of it. 

Varsha: Yes, for sure. And you were talking about voyages that are not easy.

Varsha:  So my student, Ella Champagne she really wanted us to explore an [00:14:00] example from a Shakespeare play in which looking globally revealed something new, just like we've been discussing with Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Varsha: So let us discuss this speech in Macbeth, in which one of the wayward sisters, or weird sisters, says to the other that she's going to waylay a sailor who's gone to Aleppo. And as you write in your book, this is a reference to an actual voyage. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?  

Lubaaba: Yeah. Another great example of Shakespeare leaning into the global Renaissance.

Lubaaba: I particularly look at this story in Chapter 3, The Grand Tour. So you have these three weird sisters as they're called in Macbeth, and they're engaging in these incantations as they're waiting for Macbeth and Banquo to show up. And so you have this this passage. If I may, I'll read it out.

Varsha: Yes, please.

Lubaaba: Where you've got the sister saying, ‘A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap / And munched and munched and munched. “Give me,” quoth I. / “Aroint thee, witch,” the rump-fed runnion cries. / Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger; / But in a sieve I’ll thither [00:15:00] sail, / And, like a rat without a tail, / I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do’.

Lubaaba: And it's a really great passage. And again, if you are not informed about the contextual history, you can think, oh, that's odd. And it's a bit of throwaway line a bit like the spiced Indian air, but no, there's a lot that's going on here.

Lubaaba: And what this particular tale is telling about is the first recorded overland English journey to India by someone called Ralph Fitch. And Ralph Fitch undertakes this journey and he goes aboard a ship called the Tiger, and he voyages across the Mediterranean. He goes to Aleppo, and from Aleppo he goes on via Iraq, via the Persian Gulf, on to India.

Lubaaba: Now, he gets to India in a slightly unpropitious way. He gets captured by the Portuguese in the island of Hormuz, which is an island of the Persian Gulf. And then the Portuguese, then basically sent him over to Portuguese India, which is in Goa on the western coast. To basically incarcerate him and throw him in a dungeon.

Lubaaba: But Ralph Fitch, he goes with a group of English travellers that includes traders, [00:16:00] jewellers, painters, and they go over to India to basically test the water and see what trade is like here. And one of the things that Ralph Fitch is particularly famous for is that he does this extensive tour of India.

Lubaaba: He spends a lot of time in Bengal in particular, but he does this extensive tour around India, which is why I've called the chapter the Grand Tour. And then when he comes back, he writes his memoirs of these travels, and they're published in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, which is a very famous and very celebrated collection of this time of travel writing.

Lubaaba: And Richard Hakluyt, who was this geographer, he went out of his way to create this anthology of various travel writers’ experience as well as letters, like diplomatic letters and these kind of things, to encourage England to engage in more travel and to engage in more trade.

Lubaaba: So Ralph Fitch's account is one of these accounts that are published in this particular volume. So again, a very concrete reference coming out in Shakespeare showing Shakespeare's awareness of what's going on in the world. 

Varsha: And how our awareness of this can [00:17:00] help us unpack the cross currents that are taking place in this play as well. 

Lubaaba: Exactly. Exactly. And it gives, and it reads a sort of fresh life into these plays when you realize that, the playwright, he's engaging with really active discussions, active travels, active encounters.

Lubaaba: Some of the leading issues of the day are being traced within these plays. We often talk about Shakespeare engaging with issues of succession, for example, the Elizabethan court and the Tudor court and their challenges of succession. Macbeth is seen as the play that's kind of celebrating the rise of a Scottish king, right?

Lubaaba: So James I saw himself as being in the line of Banquo. So the first performance was at the court of James I. So these are kind of very, for want of a better word, provincial interpretations that are done of Shakespeare, which are quite popularly done about how it impacts English or if we're really going to extend, Western European histories.

Lubaaba: But Shakespeare's engaging the globe. Majority of his plays are set in the Mediterranean. Very few of them are actually even set in [00:18:00] England. So in that sense, I feel like we need to do Shakespeare a lot more justice by pulling out these references and really unpacking them.

Varsha: Absolutely. And talking about English history, one of the most overlooked aspects I think of English history is the prevalence of interracial marriages. But as you write in your book, and I'm quoting you here, ‘English travellers had been marrying Asian women from the moment that they set foot on those lands.’ And you also recount the remarkable story of Maryam Kahn, who married two Englishmen in succession. Could you share a glimpse of her life and her unions, and how might this history reshape our understanding of interracial relationships in plays like Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and so on?

Lubaaba: Maryam Khan is one of my favourite people ever. Big fan. I will happily to set up the Maryam Khan Club. Big fan of her. She's this fabulous [00:19:00] woman. And one of the most remarkable things about her is that she's the first Indian noblewoman to travel and reside in London.

Lubaaba: So she actually voyages all the way to London in the early 17th century as the wife of an East India Company captain. So the first English man, you are right, she marries two English men in succession, very resourceful woman. So the first Englishman that she marries is William Hawkins. Now William Hawkins, he comes from a line of traders and travellers and slave traders as well.

Lubaaba: And so he is the man who led the first English voyage direct to India. So he captained the ship and voyaged direct to India. He arrived around 1608. And then he goes on to the court of the then reigning ruler Emperor Jahangir. And so he spends a few years at Jahangir’s court basically trying to convince the Emperor to do a trade treaty with England.

Lubaaba: Now the Mughals had literally no interest in this. They never actually engaged in a proper trade treaty. And also the Mughals were hands off about trade anyway. They left it to independent private traders so the [00:20:00] Mughals were not particularly keen. Also, they were like, what is England?

Lubaaba: Because they're very much invested in the Indian Ocean, and this region is very rich and very powerful and has advanced economies, has advanced manufacturing industries, and India itself has all of these as well. So it really didn't need anything. England and Western Europe in that day was the modern equivalent of the developing world, essentially. And India was the modern equivalent of the first world, for want of a better word or phrase.

Lubaaba: So William Hawkins goes to India and he becomes Indian. This guy really just wants to be Indian. So he goes there and Jahangir the Emperor has a lot of fun with him 'cause it's like he found a Ken doll, and he's like, I'm going to dress this Ken doll up and turn him into Indian Ken.

Lubaaba: So then he literally dresses William Hawkins up, gives him Indian clothes, gives him an Indian household, gives him Indian staff, labels him the English Khan. And Khan is sort of a minor title of nobility. And William Hawkins absolutely laps the stuff up. He just wants to be Indian because these people are rich and powerful. I rather want to be like them. [00:21:00]

Lubaaba: And then Jahangir is like, ‘hang on, shall I get you an Indian wife as well?’. And Hawkins at this point, he says in his memoirs that, well, I said that, okay, she has to be Christian. I didn't think they could find a Christian. And this shows how little the English knew India.

Lubaaba: India was so diverse, as it is to this day. So of course there were loads of Christians there. Jahangir’s father Akbar had actually established churches and funded these churches and invited Armenian Christians into India. So there were loads of Christians and there were Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims.

Lubaaba: So Jahangir said, ‘yeah, of course I've got one of those’. So Jahangir actually had a ward in his court called Maryam Khan. Maryam Khan's father was a merchant who worked with the Emperor and the Emperor was fond of him. Once he died, he took Maryam Khan in as his ward. William Hawkins's marriage and Maryam Kahn's marriage was actually arranged by the Mughal Emperor himself.

Lubaaba: And Maryam Kahn and William Hawkins get married and they actually have quite a happy marriage in the sense that William Hawkins, he's very happy about his wife, right? And then, William Hawkins unfortunately falls out of favour with the monarch.

Lubaaba: Now, the reason he fell out of favour with the monarch was he [00:22:00] showed up drunk at court. And the English were known, the English sailors in particular had quite a bad reputation for being drunkards. And Jahangir, who himself was a drunkard, let’s be honest, used to go through bouts of piety where he'd say, ‘right, I'm gonna stop drinking and no one else is allowed to drink’.

Lubaaba: So he was having one of these bouts of piety where he said, ‘right, I'm stopping drinking and no one else is allowed to drink’. And William Hawkins clearly missed the memo. So he showed up drunk. And so that really led to his fall from grace at court, and he got kicked out. And there were a number of other intrigues that took place as well.

Lubaaba: So then he leaves with Maryam Khan and they decide to travel back to England. Now, Maryam Khan's family doesn't actually want her to do that. They're like, ‘God, we're never gonna see her again. Where's she gonna go?’ But the couple give her family the slip and they voyage off to England.

Lubaaba: But unfortunately, what happens is William Hawkins falls ill – likely dysentery – and so he dies on the voyage there. So Maryam Kahn, she's voyaging alone as this Indian woman to a country that, if you can imagine, she's never been to, completely alien country, and it's kind of a [00:23:00] backwater as well.

Lubaaba: So she's going from this powerful empire, from the very court of the empire to God knows where. And now she's a widow as well. So, you can imagine what, how difficult this must have been. But along the voyage they met another ship and one of the senior company captains of this ship was a guy called Gabriel Towerson.

Lubaaba: And so he and Willam Hawkins are friendly, so Maryam Khan clearly met him as well. Now the voyage goes off, lands in Ireland, and Gabrielle Towerson and Maryam Khan, they hook up. And then they go on to London and then they get married. So, Maryam Khan, by the time she reaches London she's already repartnered, so to speak, and they get married.

Lubaaba: And Gabrielle Towerson, because he's an East India Company. Captain, and this is also true for William Hawkins, they're like, ‘Indian woman, ker-ing, right? We're gonna be able to get all the connections. This is someone from court’, all of that. And also, they were marrying up 'cause this woman was, she was nobility. Highly educated.

Lubaaba: And also in India, this was a time, particularly when it came to nobility and women at court, they knew their mind. They were [00:24:00] very wealthy. They had their own money. They had financial independence, which was unheard of in parts of Europe.

Lubaaba: In Europe, often you, the moment you got married, your wealth went to your husband. They married by consent. These people, if they didn't wanna marry, they would say no. So lots of these Mughal emperors, they had to pursue their wives until the wife agreed to marry them. Right? And, sometimes they'd have to send their mum to just go and beg this woman, ‘please agree to marry him’, right?

Lubaaba: So this was a place in which, if Maryam Khan got married, Maryam Khan would've given consent to this marriage. So by the time they reached London, she's remarried, she's married Gabriel Towerson. And so part of what happens is the East India Company, as I say, perilous voyages, lots of these sailors die. Their families are back in England.

Lubaaba: So their families go on to petition the East India Company to give compensation. Maryam Khan went and petitioned. And she asked for an astronomical sum, because this is a wealthy woman and she doesn't work by halves. The East India Company did not accept it, but they agreed to give her something like 200 guineas.

Lubaaba: And so, the day she got married was the day she was given the money. But of course, Gabriel Towerson, he was [00:25:00] there when she went and made the petition at the East India Company. So clearly, he was looking to make good of that money. And we're in England now, so the moment she gets married, her husband takes this money, and of course it happens the day they get married, very conveniently.

Lubaaba: So then she's remarried. She lives in England for a few years, and then eventually they travel back to India. And by this time, the two can't stand each other. Right?

Varsha: Yeah. I really enjoyed reading that she gets on well with William Hawkins, and not with the second husband.

Lubaaba: Yeah, and so they have, they are not very happy. And then when they go to India, Gabriel Towerson, he's hoping to be a big shot in India because he's married this Indian wife, but Maryam Khan’s not been India for a few years, right, and she's lost contact with the court. So he doesn't get all these big connections.

Lubaaba: But what he does get is Maryam Khan’s family saying, ‘what gifts have you brought us from England?’. So rather than having these connections, they start asking him for stuff. So yeah, so it doesn't work out, and Gabriel Towerson eventually, he decides to travel back to England and she says, no, I'm not going with you.

Lubaaba: So [00:26:00] she stays back in India. And he travels on back to England. And in India she gives the East India Company a wild time because she keeps petitioning them saying, ‘I am one of your wives. You have to give me money’. And so in the East India Company offices in India, they're like, ‘we really have to deal with this. She could create a lot of trouble for us’.

Lubaaba: So, and they never reconnected, Gabriel Towerson and Maryam Khan. And I don't know if I either cared, to be honest, because they weren't very fond of each other. But this was really a vibrant case and a high-profile case that's quite well-recorded of an Indian woman who married two Englishmen and her experiences.

Lubaaba: But of course there were lots of more minor cases of this taking place as well, that may not have been recorded. But I mean, love is love, right? You go to India, you fall in love, you're gonna marry, right?

Lubaaba: So, often you had people who went to India, because East India Company travellers, they were, you're there to do a job. You're not allowed to have family. You can't bring your family to India. That was East India Company policy and you're not allowed to have family in India either. But lots of them still did.

Varsha: Yeah. And they were there for years. [00:27:00] and years, right? They would just stay there and form these connections. And that really informs our reading, right? Of all of these interracial, intercultural marriages that we have in Shakespeare's plays.

Lubaaba: Absolutely. And in the plays that you mentioned, in Titus Andronicus, you've got Aaron the Moor, and you've got Tamora; in Antony and Cleopatra, it's a whole play about a European man marrying an African queen. Like that's a big deal. Clearly it's a huge thing. Right?

Lubaaba: And then, in Othello, it's a whole play about a Moorish man who's married a white European woman, right? Again, Shakespeare's leaning into these things because these are real lived realities. We know that it happened a lot in the Mediterranean context and with relations between North Africa and Europeans and the Ottomans and Europeans, but also in the Indian Ocean.

Lubaaba: And, lots of these relationships were marriage and lots of them were not marriages. So you had a lot of children born out of wedlock as well. And of course you had, had these Asian and African wives coming to [00:28:00] England as well. So, Maryam Khan is just one example.

Lubaaba: Another one is Teresa Sampsonia, who's this Persian lady who marries an English diplomat, Robert Shirley. And she also travels to England and they have a child called Henry who actually grows up with his grandparents in England. 

Lubaaba: So this is something that's happening and particularly in London, where you have lots of these taverns where lots of these people, travellers and sailors, and Shakespeare and the playwrights also frequent these taverns. One particularly famous one is the Mermaid Tavern. These stories are circulating, right?

Lubaaba: People are encountering these, and so often these taverns are hotspots for picking up stories and picking up ideas. And Shakespeare, he never travelled himself, but the world certainly came to London. Right? And the stories certainly came to London. They're circulating in books such as Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Purchas His Pilgrimes, and within these communal spaces that you're having.

Varsha: I'm so glad you brought our attention to orality as circulation of stories, because I think Shakespeare source [00:29:00] study also is pretty Eurocentric and also quite classist at times, right? Where Tiffany Stern on the podcast was talking about fairgrounds as places where he could have picked up things or for example, tavern songs and ballads that are circulating.

Varsha: But of course, there are these stories that sailors and merchant sailors are bringing in. So orality is a big way in which these stories, even if we can't directly map onto the them, we really have to pay attention to because obviously, that needs to be diversified as well. How he's taking inspiration from all of these networks.

Lubaaba: Absolutely.

Varsha: And we have been talking about babies and children, so I will have to ask you this. In a brilliant article on Midsummer Night’s Dream, Margo Hendricks suggested that the Indian changeling boy which is fought over by Oberon and Titania, might be read as a mixed-race child.

Varsha: [00:30:00] Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with this Indian changeling child. And there were quite a few children then born out of interracial marriages during that time weren't there? And how do we trace them in history? Is it difficult? And what might be some of the ways where we can explore this?

Lubaaba: I think it's really great what you've picked up on in terms of classist historical readings, particularly looking at sources as solely textual is a very Eurocentric way of looking at sources. 

Lubaaba: And it absolutely folds out of history the people who may have been, may not have been literate, may have engaged in very much oral traditions, may have very much shared their stories and experiences in communal spaces such as fairgrounds, as you mentioned. That's a great, that's a great example. And taverns and other similar spaces. I think in parts of particularly the Islamic world, oral tradition is really quite an advanced science.

Lubaaba: So the idea that you know, [00:31:00] authenticity or accuracy is only textual is really quite a flawed and quite a Eurocentric way of looking at things. So in that sense, I think that's something to consider. And, a lot of these stories would've come from oral traditions as well, right?

Lubaaba: Because it's not only literate nobility who are having babies, right? It's also your average sailor going out and marrying or starting a family and that sort of thing. And there were babies and you know, I am absolutely obsessed with our Indian boy as well, Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Lubaaba: Oh my God, I'm so obsessed with this little boy. But Margo Hendricks, she makes a great argument about the potential for this child being mixed race.

Lubaaba: And mixed-race children was a big deal in this time because they were being born. So I gave the example of Teresa Sampsonia's son Henry, who's a half Persian, half English child being raised in England. And this is a child who is in the records because Teresa Sampsonia and her husband are both diplomats.

Lubaaba: And so, they appear in East India Company records. And the East India Company are fabulous about keeping records, but often the records are of the elite, right? They're not necessarily always of your average sailor. [00:32:00] But the nature of voyages, again, if we go back to the fact that these voyages are so perilous, right? By the time you've reached your destination, half your crew is dead. So what are you going to do?

Lubaaba: You're gonna pick up sailors locally, right? So the return voyages were populated with people from around the world. There were lots of these sailors coming back to England and back in England they'd marry. Sometimes they'd stay for a few years, sometimes they'd travel back, sometimes they'd stay for a few years, marry, have kids and maybe take their families back.

Lubaaba: So that was taking place as well. And these are, again, something that maybe we won't always have textually, but it was visible, right? It was visibly happening. So one story that I write about is a group of Indian sailors who end up in London towards the latter part of the 17th century.

Lubaaba: And they stay in London for a few years. They come back to India and this is around 1699, and they start harassing the East India Company ambassador because the East India Company has not paid them. 

Varsha: Oh gosh.

So they're very angry and they keep going to the ambassador's house every single day and harassing [00:33:00] him for it.

Lubaaba: And so this is one of the recorded examples of these sailors who were living in London, right? And in London, people complain about immigration as if it's happened in the past like 30, 40 years. It's been happening for 500 years. London is very global.

Lubaaba: And it has been, and it's been global because London's the one that reached out, right? Yes. Not the other way round. And because many of these first travellers who are coming in numbers are because England needed people to man their ships on the voyage back, right?

Lubaaba: So again, it's English desire that is bringing these people. But absolutely. So you have these people arriving the demographic landscape of London and these port cities, Portsmouth, et cetera, is transforming and people are marrying and having families. So this is very live, right.

Lubaaba: And Shakespeare, again, part of his experience of being in London would've experienced these as well. And this would absolutely emerge in such narratives as the Indian boy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Children are the manifestation of these relationships and they become challenging [00:34:00] because where do you racially place them?

Lubaaba: Mm-hmm. And so they're really this potent example of racial interaction and miscegenation in this period that becomes sites of conflict as well, isn't it? And that's exactly what we see in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That's it. 

Varsha: That's it.

Lubaaba: Major site of conflict over this Indian boy, right?

Varsha: Absolutely. Yeah. My producer tells me that it is time to wrap up. So, one last question. Your book is very engaging and accessible to a very broad audience rather than only to a specialised academic one, although they can gain a lot from reading it.

Varsha: So my student Annie Giarratana, here she is, she wanted to know what do you hope that a general interested reader feels after they finish and put down your book? 

Lubaaba: Oh, lots of things. I hope that they feel enthralled and excited by a history that they've not encountered before. [00:35:00] 

Lubaaba: I hope they feel frustrated that they've not encountered this history before, and why. I hope they'll feel enthused to find out more about this history, and I hope that they'll feel excited to see themselves in the history. This is a story of global encounters.

Lubaaba: I’m writing about England and India. So, the English go to India. The Dutch go to India, the Portuguese go to India, the French go to India, the Italians go to India. And they're all having a massive fight in India, by the way.

Varsha: Yeah, right.

Lubaaba: They're not fighting with the Indians, they're fighting with themselves. And then, within India, you've got the Persians coming and the Turkish coming and the French coming and the Chinese coming and everyone's interacting. And what we see ultimately is, history is the story of all of us.

Lubaaba: And it's the story of many characters, many voices that cuts across race and class and gender and all of these factors. And so really what I hope is that people read this and realise that history is far more interconnected than we may have often been told. And that it's worth engaging with history as [00:36:00] global and interactive, and seeing what that does to literature and what that does to our own understanding of the present as well.

Varsha: So great provocation to restudy history with that lens and write your own part of it too. 

Lubaaba: Absolutely. 

Varsha: Great. So Lubaaba, it's been so fantastic learning from you, as I always do. So thank you so much for being here and being so generous with your time and ideas. 

Varsha: That was Dr. Lubaaba Al-Azami, speaking about her luminous book, Travellers in the Golden Realm, a work that opens the pathways and sees between worlds and lets us walk through or sail through centuries of connections and encounters. And with that I bid you adieu, adieu, adieu. [00:37:00] 

Varsha: But remember to tune in to Women & Shakespeare, streaming at Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you want to listen to the podcast with a full transcript, head over to our website, www.womenandshakespeare.com. Until then, keep smashing the patriarchy. 

*Glass Shatter*