Renaissance writers projected Muslims into a pagan devil-idol pantheon from medieval formula

Evidence

Other European literary genres feature milder Turkish monsters. English literature and drama typically portray the Turks as heretics who prayed to a god named “Mahomet, Mawmet, Mahoun, or Mahound,” part of a pantheon that included “Apollin, Termagent, and other devilish idols.” … Few positive accounts of Muslim characters are found in Elizabethan writing, dramas or otherwise, usually following the old formulas of Islam as a heresy, Muhammad as the Antichrist, and Muslims as monsters. One exception is a purely descriptive, and thus non-polemical, account of Muslims that includes details of the Moors’ rituals: “They turne their faces eastward when they kill anything. They use beades, and pray to saints.” Such descriptions reflect the Renaissance practice of describing foreigners in what we might call academic terms, seen as well in Venetian and other schools of painting. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 275

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names Mahomet/Mawmet/Mahoun/Mahound and the devil idols Apollin and Termagent as Renaissance vocabulary for the manufactured Muslim other.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s frame that the Muslim monster image preceded real contact, showing Elizabethan writers recycling medieval polemics rather than observing Muslims.