New York Times
A blatant parallel to the present is the English attitude to foreigners from the Muslim world. Princely envoys, such as those sent by the sultan of Morocco, were received in great pomp. The sultan was bent on recovering Andalusia, lost in 1492 to the Spanish, resulting in the expulsion of Muslims and Jews. The sultan sent an ambassador to the English court with a party of 16 men to explore the possibility of joint military action against Spain. The party landed at Dover in August 1600 and was granted an audience at Nonsuch Palace. Talks were held in Spanish through an interpreter, named Lewis Lewkenor. Presumably of Spanish Jewish descent, he would have been a native speaker of the 15th-century Castilian language retained by the Jewish exiles in Arab lands. During the six months that the Moroccans spent in London, the ambassador had himself portrayed by an anonymous artist, who did his best to paint an image of “The Noble Moor.” The Moroccan stands in North African white garb. He has a fancy sword with a would-be exotic hilt, improbably attached to his side in the European fashion — but with nothing to hold it in place. An inscription in Roman capitals comically identifies the sitter in Latin.
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