Medieval Europeans fused Saracens and pagans into a single interchangeable category.

Evidence

The point of all this is that for many western Europeans throughout the Middle Ages, Saracens were pagans, and pagans were Saracens: the two words become interchangeable. When, in the early fifteenth century, Firmin le Ver composes his Latin-French dictionary, he defines “Saracenus” as “paganus,” noting that it derives “from Sarah, as in born from Sarah” (a Sara dicitur, quasi ex Sara genitus); for paganus he gives the French equivalents “sarrasin, paiens, mescreans.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 702

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the vault’s Anidjar/Aziz claim that Islam was constructed not as a separate religion but as an undifferentiated primal ‘other’ — the Saracen-pagan fusion is the medieval root of that erasure.
• DEFINE: Clarifies ‘Saracen’ etymology as it was understood — born from Sarah — and its synonymy with pagan.