Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Miss apps.

Welcome back to my history classroom.

Last time I saw you, we were sailing the Caribbean sea, with Sir Francis Drake and the sea dogs.

And in today's session, we will be looking towards North Africa and the Islamic world tracing the ways in which queen Elizabeth the first England was connected to those areas of the world.

If you have been watching my videos, you may have noticed that my hair has suddenly gotten a lot shorter.

I finally managed to get myself a haircut.

After two months of waiting, my hair was so dry.

I could hear it crunching.

So I am one very excited to have a haircut.

Two, very excited to be teaching you today about Elizabeth's place in the world and her connections in particular with Islam.

So without further redo, let's get started.

I would like you to grab your pen, grab some paper, pause the video if you need to.

Okay, so you should have grabbed your pen.

You should have grabbed your paper and we should be ready to start.

If we remember back, we are investigating the inquiry question.

Why was the world opening up to the, uh, to Elizabeth the first and her people? but the title for today's lesson is why was Elizabeth the first also known as Sultana Isabel? I would like you to get that title down now.

So take a couple of seconds to get that down.

Pause the video.

If you need to.

And I will meet you again at our first task.

You've grabbed your pen.

You've grabbed your paper.

Now let's get started.

We are going to start this lesson with a tradition that we've already encountered a couple of times in my lessons.

So I have one of honestly, my favourite images in history.

This is my favourite portrait.

If I had the money, I would track this down.

If I won the lottery and I would buy this for my house, I love it so much.

And I love the story behind it as well.

So what I'd like you to do is have a look at this portrait and just like we've done in our prior two lessons.

I would like you to write down everything that you could guess about this figure or about, hint, hint.

When the portrait was painted.

put a pause on the video and have a go at that now.

As always, I'm fairly sure that you've come up with some wonderful ideas.

So let's just talk through what I might have gotten from this image.

And as always, you can add to your own list.

So first of all, you may have noticed that in this image, we can see some Moroccan or North African style dress.

This man is not dressed in your stereotypical Elizabethan garb Elizabethan dress.

You might also have noticed the sword.

Now, swords were also shown in traditional Elizabethan portraits as a sign of status, a manliness, because most men in this period would have been brilliant trained soldiers.

If you look through to carefully, you might also have noticed the writing behind the figure in Elizabethan portraits.

We always have some information.

And interestingly for us, we have a man in Moroccan or North African style dress.

However, these inscriptions, these writings, they're not in Arabic as we might expect, instead, they are in Latin.

And if we look at the words behind our figure, the Latin says, "Legatus Regis Barbaria in Angliam." This means in English, "The ambassador to England for the Barbary King." So the ambassador, a person sent to England on behalf of the King of Morocco.

If we look at the date 1600, this means that this portrait was painted in the reign of Elizabeth the first.

And because the inscription is in Latin, just like inscriptions would be, just like the writing would be in English, Elizabethan portraits.

We can guess that this portrait was painted whilst this figure was in England.

And we know Sultana Isabel, when we saw that word, that phrase in our title.

Sultana Isabelle is what the Moroccan King called King, sorry, called queen Elizabeth the first.

So here we have a portrait of the Moroccan ambassador to England painted, during his time in England.

And where it says the number 42.

We know that this figure was 42.

When this portrait was painted, So, we have a portraits of a Moroccan figure who was an ambassador to England.

Somebody sent to England from 16 hundreds.

We have a queen, good queen Bess Elizabeth, the first the Virgin queen.

He was also known as Sultana Isabel.

So we obviously have quite a deep connection between Elizabethan, England and Morocco.

And that's what we are going to investigate today.

So what was Morocco like in the Elizabethan era.

Fast of all, just to get your brains into gear and understanding where Morocco is.

If we look at our map of England and the Mediterranean Europe and Africa, we can see the England in the North.

We can see Spain in the middle and bordering it to the South with a tiny sort of strip of water in between is Morocco at the tip of North Africa.

And if we look at the Moroccan kingdom in North Africa, which we can see in pink here, we can see that it's actually expanding in the Elizabethan era.

And not only does it cover North Africa, but it's also starting to go down towards West Africa and the coast of West Africa, which in this period is full of gold reserves.

So one thing it's really important for us to understand when we think about Morocco in England is that Morocco is massively powerful and wealthy.

It's actually more powerful and more wealthy than Elizabethan England.

It's so wealthy that it's leader Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur is known as in Arabic, as 'al-Dhahabi', which means the golden one.

And it was said that he had so much gold that every day, 1,400 workers converted that gold minute by minute into even more coins.

So you can just imagine from that 1,400 coins constantly making, sorry.

1,400 hammers, constantly making coins from gold.

You can just imagine how wealthy Sultan Ahmed al-Mansur was.

And you can see here, one of his golden coins.

He was so wealthy.

In fact that most of the Queens in England at this time, were actually made out of West African gold that came to England via Morocco.

And in this image, you can Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur's El Badi palace.

His massive palace in Marrakech in Morocco.

And this is an engraving that was created by a westerner.

So by a European person, travelling to Morocco.

He was absolutely shocked by the sheer amount of wealth and majesty of this ruler.

This palace was created in 1591 during his reign.

And it's still there today.

So if you do ever go on a holiday or you're lucky enough to go to Morocco, I really want to go to Morocco and you can go and visit this palace still today.

So what do we know so far? Well, first of all, we know that Morocco was ruled over by a man called Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

We know that that man was fabulously wealthy.

We know also that he sent ambassadors to England.

So this portrait that we've seen before us, of a figure who I will from now on referred to as Ben Messaoud, was the ambassador to England of Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

And so this figure, and this portrait that we've looked at at the start of the lesson, was the secretary of state to Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, which meant that he was a trusted right hand man of the King.

And this figure, Ben Messaoud came to England in 1600 on behalf of Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur to talk to Elizabeth the first as part of a group of people that we call the Moroccan delegation.

And the idea was that they were coming to England to help foster even stronger links between Morocco and England.

However, we're going to put a pause on it there because I've taught you quite a lot already about Morocco.

And we're going to do a true or false.

So we've got question A, B, C, and D.

As I read out statement A, B, C, and D, I would like you to either write true or false on your paper.

So statement This image is of Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.

True or false? This image is of the ambassador to England of Ahmad al-Mansur.

So it's not Ahmad al-Mansur but instead, it is his ambassador, Ben Messaoud.

Morocco was wealthier and more powerful than England.

True or false.

And finally, In Moroccan letters from Ahmad al-Mansur, Elizabeth is referred to by her Islamic Arabic name of Sultana Isabel.

True or false.

Put a pause on the video now and make sure you've written true or false for each of those statements.

Okay, let's go through our answers.

So statement This image is of Sultan Ahmad al-Masur.

False.

It is not.

This image is of the ambassador to England of Ahmad al-Mansur.

True.

This is a portrait of the ambassador to England, not the Sultan of Morocco.

Morocco was wealthier and more powerful than England.

That is true.

In Moroccan letters, Elizabeth the first is referred to a Sultana Isabel.

That again is true.

So statement false.

Statement true.

Statement true.

Statement true.

Give yourself a tick or a cross and correct yourself if you need to.

I'm fairly sure that most of you would have gotten at least three or four out of four, so well done for however you did.

I now going to put this over to you.

So I'm now going to give you an opportunity to learn a little bit more about the connections between Morocco and Elizabeth and Elizabeth in England.

So pause the video, read the slides on the next page about Elizabeth and England's connections to the Islamic world and answer my comprehension questions.

Put a pause on the video to get that done and then resume me once you are finished.

Good luck.

Okay.

Welcome back.

I'm sure you did absolutely wonderfully brilliantly well answering those questions.

So let's just now in the video go over what you might have written.

So the answers to our comprehension questions, remember I often give an acceptable answer and a really, really good answer, but as long as you've got the basic premise, the basic idea, you are doing brilliantly.

So number one, how would you describe the kingdom of Morocco in the reign of Elizabeth the first? A good answer, sorry, an acceptable answer might be, "During the reign of Elizabeth the first, Morocco was wealthy." A really fantastic answer would be, "During the reign of Elizabeth the first Morocco was remarkably wealthy due to its access to West African gold.

It was also at war with Spain." If you just talk to the wealthy bit, brilliant.

Two.

Who was the mutual enemy of England and Morocco, "It was the Spanish." That's an acceptable answer.

A good answer that might've used a fuller sentence.

"So the mutual enemy of Morocco and England was Spain." Number three.

What was the impact of the Spanish Armada on Morocco's relationship with England? An acceptable answer would be, "It made them closer." A really, really good answer that would be, "The Spanish Armada showed that England could defeat the Spanish.

It made England and Morocco closer as it appeared the England could make a good partner against Spain." Number four.

What did Elizabeth and Ahmad al-Mansur want from each other in 1600? An acceptable answer would be, "supports against Spain." A really, really good answer, that would be, "Elizabeth the first wished for Moroccan sugar as part of an agreement between the two to come together to invade Spain." Really, really brilliant.

If you've got that answer.

You might also have noticed that I've put an 'e' in Ahmad instead of an 'a', I need to go back and edit that, don't I? All right.

Number five.

The challenge question.

So here, I really wanted you to be thinking about the evidence outside of just the connection between Elizabeth and Ahmad al-Mansur free the Moroccan delegation.

I wanted you to look for other evidence that shows that Morocco in England had a relationship.

So challenge question.

What other evidence do we have of Elizabethan England's links to Morocco? So you could have talks about the trading posts in Moroccan towns.

If you even wrote down some of the towns, such as Safi, for example, fantastic or Agadir.

And these were established in 1551.

You might also have mentioned the Barbary company established in 1585.

If you're a real, real superstar, you might've written down the life and conversion of Christianity to Mary Fillis who was a Moroccan convert.

So she was a Moroccan woman at the age of 20 in London who decided to convert from Islam to Christianity.

And we know her story because her record survive in the parish records of St Botolph's Church.

So you could mention Mary Fillis as an evidence of people coming from Morocco to England.

If you did manage to get that really, really well done.

And if you're ever in the London area, you should look up some photos charts because it's just near the Gherkin building.

So it's really easy to find.

So our question, why was the world opening up to Elizabeth the first and her people? When we think about Morocco, we can actually consider Morocco fitting into a lot of our different themes.

So we have wealth as a reason for why the Elizabethans were starting to explore and trade.

We have religion pushing the Elizabethans through their tension with Spain to try and develop their own empire.

And then we also have warfare.

So we have the war with, with Spain, that's also pushing the Elizabethans to develop greater trade, to develop their own empire.

When we think about Morocco, we have wealth because we have the Elizabethans trying to trade for these luxury goods in Morocco that will make them much more money.

We have the aspect of religion because Spain is a mutual enemy of Morocco as an Islamic nation, but also of England as a Protestant nation.

So they have the mutual enemy of Catholic Spain, and we also have warfare.

So warfare Elisabeth's relationship with Spain, the Spanish Armada, the Wars of Spain helped to further develop her relationship with Morocco, as she tries to gain an Alliance there.

We are going to keep coming back to this question.

And in our final lesson, we will start to think about how we might write an answer to this particular question.

I'm back.

Well done for making it this far in the lesson and well done for answering those comprehension questions.

I've actually realised that haven't told you why I love this portrait so much.

So the reason why I'm desperate to win the lottery and buy this for my future mansion is because this portrait was actually misunderstood for decades.

It actually lived in the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham for a very long time, because the story of the portrait wasn't known.

Not many people throughout history understood or knowing the deep connections between Morocco, Elizabeth the first and the Islamic world.

And in fact, this portrait for years, nobody knew who the figure was.

And it was thought that it might be of an imagined figure of a fellow.

A fellow is a character in Shakespeare's play of the same name, a fellow who himself is a more.

So he himself is an African person who was a Muslim from North Africa.

And so the Shakespeare Institute brought this because they just thought, "Oh, this is what the character of a fellow might look like." And it's only really in recent years that it's been realised.

It's been discovered that actually this figure is of Ben Messaoud who was the Moroccan ambassador to England.

So I want you to show that you have so much better knowledge than all these people who did not know who this figure was.

So what I'd like you to do is your challenge task, now.

I want you to pause the video and I want you to explain why we're the Elizabethans increasingly linked to Morocco.

I would like you to use my sentence starters.

So, the Elizabethans were increasingly linked to Morocco for numerous reasons, including wealth, religion, and warfare.

And I would like you to explain those connections, pause the video now have a go, even if you think it's hard and come back, resume the video once you're finished.

I am so impressed that you had to go at the challenge task.

Remember when I'm going over the challenge task, it doesn't necessarily matter if you haven't written exactly the same words as me.

If you haven't gotten all of the things that I've gotten.

And remember, I've got a degree in history.

So I'm cheesing a little bit.

If you would like you can always pause the video.

You can have another go.

You could rewrite, you could add to what you've written.

So do not freak out if you haven't written exactly what I have.

But if you have gone along these lines, really, really well done.

So here's my model answer.

I would have written, "The Elizabethans were increasingly linked to Morocco for reasons, including wealth, religion, and warfare.

Morocco was a very wealthy place.

The English established trading posts with Morocco in 1551 and the Barbary company to trade for goods, such as gunpowder, gold, sugar and horses in 1585.

The religious differences between Catholic Spain and Islamic, Morocco, Catholic, Spain, and Protestant England, made Spain a mutual enemy, both Morocco and England ended up at war with Spain, making it useful for both sides to come together, to fight against Spain.

This led to Ahmad al-Mansur sending ambassadors to England." You might even have been fancy and added in in 1600.

I don't know.

Either way, I'm sure you've written something.

Absolutely brilliant.

And speaking of brilliant work, I would absolutely love to see your work.

So please share your work with Oak national, if you would like to.

So if you'd like to share your work with me, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @Oak national and learn with Oak.

I've really enjoyed teaching you today.

I've been miss Apps.

I will see you soon and goodbye.