Medieval Christians classed non-Egyptian Africans with Saracens as monstrous races

Evidence

The monster that encapsulated all three of these entities-Saracen, Jew, and black African-is the Black Saracen. This is a hybrid monster, an African (implicated as Satan by his dark skin), Jewish (depicted executing a saint), and Muslim (by the moniker “Saracen” as well as by the turban he often wears). With his black, purple, or brown skin, large lips, and curly hair, this monster is clearly meant to represent an Ethiopian, that is, a non-Egyptian African. Satan often masqueraded as a serpent, a dragon, or a human with blackened skin. The Black Saracen is but one of the many forms that Satan took, a symbol of evil walking the earth: The damned were often shown being tormented by serpents in visions of Hell, and this was depicted in medieval art. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 202 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Medieval racial classification from Noah’s sons seeded later European denials of African achievement; Medieval theologians constructed Muslims as a degraded race descending from the slave Hagar; Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201 (+3 more)

Related

• The Black Saracen fused Saracen, Jew, and African into a single Satanic monster (similarity 0.90)
• Medieval Christians racialized Muslims as black, bestial, and lustful (similarity 0.88)
• A Black Saracen giant messenger embodies the racialized Persian monster (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval art and text conflated Jews and Muslims into a single Saracen body (similarity 0.86)
• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery (similarity 0.85)
• Medieval Christians conflated Jews and Muslims into shared monster figures (similarity 0.83)
• The dark-skinned Muslim monster persisted from medieval iconography into American imaginations (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering (similarity 0.82)
• Medieval literature equated Saracens with demons condemned to hell (similarity 0.82)
• The Saracen giant’s only vulnerability is its sexual organs (similarity 0.82)
• Blackness coded Muslim evil in medieval art, linking Muslims to Africans. (similarity 0.82)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters encode Western anxieties about Africans and Muslims together (similarity 0.82)
• Jews and Muslims were interchangeable demonic figures in the medieval Christian imagination. (similarity 0.82)
• Hell’s paintings filled with Jewish, Muslim, and African monsters torturing humans. (similarity 0.82)
• Renaissance art linked dark skin to Satan and Muslim villainy (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Europeans first encountered Africans chiefly as Muslim soldiers, fusing racial and religious identity #expands (0.70)
• Christians treated all non-Christian monstrous figures as interchangeable enemies #expands (0.70)
• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery #contradicts (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201
• The Black Saracen fused Saracen, Jew, and African into a single Satanic monster #expands (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 202