Christians understood Saracens through biblical and patristic categories

Evidence

Christian writers of the seventh and eighth centuries, confronted with “Saracen” invasions, looked to the Bible and church fathers for information about who these Saracens were. … The construction of a polemical image of Saracens started before the rise of Islam. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the vault claim (Anidjar/Aziz) that the Islam-West opposition was pre-figured in Christian theological categories before Islam existed — Saracens as biblical people of Hagar/Ishmael.