Desert-arab fiction justified European stewardship of the Muslim world.

Evidence

In the genre of fiction known as “The Arab of the Desert,” the desert “symbolized the alleged unproductive, fossilized nature of the Arab and Muslim world,” which was in need of European stewardship. Because of their arrested development, the Arab, Turk, and African could not take care of themselves and needed outside help. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 407

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘Arab of the Desert’ genre is a named, evidence-bearing genre connecting tribal tales to the manufactured-monster thesis.