Marlowe depicted Tamburlaine by recycling medieval monstrous-race portrayals of Muslims

Evidence

Tamburlaine is described as a “monster that hath drunk a sea of blood,” suggesting that he drinks the blood of humans. He is identified as a hydra, the multi-headed monster with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a snake. He is a monster alienated from God: … A monster of five hundred thousand heads, … The sum of men, the hate and scourge of God, … This description relies on the medieval depictions of Muslims as members of a monstrous race. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 281

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core thesis: the ‘Muslim monster’ figure is manufactured from recycled theological/virulently imagined material rather than observation. Blood-drinking connects back to medieval liturgical anti-Muslim polemic.
• DEFINE: Establishes hydra/monster as the precise figure archetype embodying Western anxiety about the Muslim.