Medieval Spanish chronicles racialized Muslims as diabolical black Africans

Evidence

The same weaving together of sources to produce a new narrative is apparent in the Estoria’s version of the Arab invasion: the dramatic tale of the sins of the Gothic monarchy, its punitive fall to the African invaders, and its slow but steady rebirth. For the Estoria as for Rodrigo, the evil, diabolical nature of the invaders is evident in their appearance: “their faces were as black as pitch, the most handsome among them was as black as a kettle, their eyes shone like candles.” There is a long medieval tradition of associating blackness with devils and of seeing dark-skinned Muslims as semidiabolical creatures. They are “the vile African people who excelled neither through strength nor through goodness, but did all with trickery and cleverness.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 971

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the racialization trope that Anidjar and Razack trace into modern Islamophobia — shows a medieval Iberian source literally coding Muslims by skin color and diabolism.
• ADDENDUM: Dark-skinned Muslims as semidiabolical creatures offers a medieval root for the racialized-moral-panic dynamics the immodesty and sacrifice essays trace across eras.