Medieval accounts imagined Muslim lands as sunless devil-haunted spaces

Evidence

Non-Christian territories were sinister spaces—far more dangerous than Christian territories, whatever monsters dwelled there. Muslim lands were dark and foreboding landscapes separated from the natural world. According to one medieval account, Saracens lived in a land “[w] here the sun does not shine, not any grain grow. There falls no rain or dew. There are no stones that are not all black. Some say devils dwell there.” In a medieval Muslim island referenced in Aliscans, the lost island is so far removed from human society that it lays “outside the known world.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 119

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does the black/dead landscape of the Saracen land map onto the demonic, and does it echo older patristic geography of the demonic East?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 119
• XREF: connects to: History invents phantasms — fantasies attached to Muslim bodies — that remain powerful; Medieval Saracen monsters were placed geographically at Christian territory’s edges; Medieval literature equated Saracens with demons condemned to hell (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Medieval writers classified Muslim followers as monstrous races and devil minions. #expands (0.65)
• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery #qualifies (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201