Muslims were identified with the monstrous races from Pseudo-Methodius onward

Evidence

Beginning with Pseudo-Methodius, both religious and secular writers associated or identified the followers of prophet Muhammad with the monstrous races. Throughout the protracted struggle (has it ever ended?), the Black Saracen is often depicted as a minion of the devil, a child of fornication, a crude outlaw covered with hair and wielding a club. In medieval sources, Muhammad himself becomes a Christian heretic who is thrown on a dung heap to be devoured by dogs and pigs. The mid-thirteenth century Pseudo-Turpin describes the Muslim Saracen warriors battling Charlemagne as “horned demonic Lares” (i.e., man-eating cynocephalics). — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 222

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Gives the reader the concrete starting point (Pseudo-Methodius) for tracing when the image preceded real contact—exactly the ‘fear without an object’ timeline they need.
• DEFINE: Identifies the specific monstrous-race schema (dog-men, man-eaters, horned demons) into which Muslims were fitted.

Related

• Medieval writers identified Muhammad’s followers with the monstrous races (similarity 0.96)
• Medieval Muslims were cast as dog-headed men, demons, and Antichrist figures (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval Europeans imagined Muslims as multiple monsters before any real contact (similarity 0.85)
• The Muslim monster image first emerged in eighth-century Christian polemics about Muhammad (similarity 0.82)
• Muslims were mapped as monstrous dog-headed races occupying the non-human edges of the world (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Muslim monsters inherited Classical categories and predated real encounters. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Muslim monster imagery recycled Classical Plinian creatures and placed them in faraway lands (similarity 0.80)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters carried African anxieties into modern imaginaries (similarity 0.80)
• Imaginary monstrous Muslims shaped the Western construction of the real Muslim (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christian identity defined itself as normative humanity with all else monstrous (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval writers classified Muslim followers as monstrous races and devil minions. (similarity 0.79)
• The figure of the Muslim monster predates and shapes the modern Muslim stereotype (similarity 0.79)
• Medieval Muslim monsters were assembled from classical, biblical, and ethnic-other sources (similarity 0.79)
• Classical Plinian monster categories were recycled onto medieval Saracens and Jews (similarity 0.79)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters encode Western anxieties about Africans and Muslims together (similarity 0.79)