Renaissance scholars legitimated Turkish monstrosity by tracing origins to mythical races

Evidence

Renaissance studies that focused on the possible origins of the Turks frequently relied on medieval fables of monstrous races and mysterious lands. In some cases, the ancestry of the Turks was linked to the Scythians, one of the groups associated with monstrous races in Shakespearean dramas and other writings. Scythians were often featured in medieval writings about monsters, and a Scythian origin, when not explicitly linked to monsters, was still cited as an explanation of the Turk’s barbarism. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 234

Categorization

• QUESTION: What made Scythians the designated monstrous ancestor — which earlier bestiary/race lore did they draw on?
• XREF: Parallels how slavery and colonial racism later invented genealogies of difference to naturalize hierarchy.