1. This history is from E. W. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar: An Account of the Defeat of Don Sebastian of Portugal at El-Ksar el-Kebir (London: Batchworth Press, 1952).
2. On the “Alcazar” literature, see The Dramatic Works of George Peele, vol. 2, ed. John Yoklavich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), pp. 226–36, and pp. 369–73.
3. Cited in Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 36.
4. George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar in The Works of George Peele, vol. 1, ed. A.H. Bullen (1888; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966); all citations come from this edition. There remain some questions about date and authorship; see Yoklavich, The Dramatic Works, 221–3,
5. and Eldred Jones, Othello’s Countrymen: Africans in English Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 42.