Elizabethan commercial signage portrayed Muslim figures as monstrous, horse-jawed faces

Evidence

During the Renaissance and for centuries following, the Turk is an eponymous figure—in paintings, in literature and drama, in advertisements, and even appearing as a popular food. Business signage for pubs, coffeehouses, and tobacco houses often displayed a Turk, Saracen, or Blackamoor (“Black Moor”) wearing a turban and brandishing a scimitar. Modern renderings of these signs are still used, typically at pubs and restaurants in Great Britain, such as the one at Waltham Abbey. These more recent renditions are tame in comparison to the extinct signs of Elizabethan England, which included portrayals of the Turk, Saracen, and Blackamoor as a monster. Written sources provide clues about what Elizabethan-era renderings of monstrous Saracens, Turks, and Moors looked like. One source describes an image of a Saracen in the following manner: “[he had] a Sarazins face, his nose too long for his lips, his cheeks like the jawes of a horse, his eyes like a Smithes forge.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 323

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s grafting article: mundane infrastructure (pub signs) carrying symbolic worldbuilding weight.
• CANDY: A ‘Saracen’s head’ with horse jaws and forge eyes on pub signs is gloriously grotesque trivia.
• SEED: Angles toward an essay on how commercial signage normalized racial monstrosity long before politics — the monster in the coffeehouse.