Bestiaries cast both Jews and Muslims as dogs and dog-headed men

Evidence

In some cases, the monsters are disguised. Such is the case of the medieval bestiary. In this genre, the killers of Christ are often cast as dogs. Both Jews and Muslims are described as dogs and, as we shall see, are depicted as dog-headed men. The bestiary is one way in which monstrous identities are established, through Jewish symbols that are then transferred onto Muslim characters in Muslim cynocephalie. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 212

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The mechanism of transferring Jewish symbols onto Muslim characters directly supports the reader’s thesis that the Muslim monster is a manufactured projection built from pre-existing demonized groups.

Related

• Medieval bestiaries transferred Jewish animal-symbols onto Muslims as dog-headed monsters (similarity 0.97)
• Bestiaries transferred Jewish monstrous symbols onto Muslim characters (similarity 0.87)
• Jews and Muslims shared the dog-headed monster linked to the devil in Christendom (similarity 0.86)
• Islam’s military threat explains why Muslim dog-men outnumber Jewish ones in medieval texts (similarity 0.85)
• Jews and Muslims shared a canine monstrous identity in medieval literature (similarity 0.83)
• Bestiary scenes staged an ontological struggle between the animal-villain and the bird-Christ (similarity 0.83)
• Dog-headed men served medieval art as both Jew and Muslim monsters of evil (similarity 0.83)
• Bestiaries encoded the Jew as animal predator attacking Christ as bird (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Muslims were cast as dog-headed men, demons, and Antichrist figures (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim monsters were depicted as cannibals who ate their enemies. (similarity 0.83)
• Depicting Jews as dog-men reinforced the parallel trope of Muslims as Christ-killers (similarity 0.83)
• Portraying one group as Christ-killers conjured up the image of the other group (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval Christians conflated Jews and Muslims into shared monster figures (similarity 0.82)
• Christian art associated Jews with barking dogs and cannibal violence (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval writers represented Jewish and Muslim bodies as jointly diseased and degenerate (similarity 0.81)