Christian art historically clothed biblical Jews in Muslim dress

Evidence

In Christian art, it is a common practice to represent biblical Jews as if they were Muslims. Perhaps the most striking examples are some of the works of Rembrandt van Rijn. In David and Uriah, for instance, the two men’s Ottoman-style turbans play a dominant part in the composition (fig. 1). Later, in the nineteenth century, it became more common to imagine biblical Israelites wearing not the Turkish turban but the Arab headscarf or kaffiyeh. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 153

Categorization

• QUESTION: How far back does this practice go — are there medieval precedents before Rembrandt in the 1600s? The chapter promises to trace “even longer roots” than nineteenth-century orientalism.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s own example chain — this is chapter one, likely a thesis that later chapters develop. Also echoes Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis in reverse: depiction treats Jew and Muslim as interchangeable.