The dark-skinned Muslim monster persisted from medieval iconography into American imaginations

Evidence

Dark-skinned Muslims found in medieval psalters, paintings, poetry, and romances are not always monstrous, but their blackness indicates that they are evil. In an image from fourteenth-century France depicting a battle, the Muslim soldiers wear turbans and have dark eyes, but perhaps what is most interesting is the face on their shields—an African man. This is but one indication of how Muslims were related not just to Jews, but also to Africans. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muslim monster imagery survived into the eighteenth century in colonial-era literature.; Film transformed a gentlemanly captivity into a Muslim-monster fantasy; Science fiction monsters shifted from representing communism to representing Islam (+14 more)

Related

• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery (similarity 0.90)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters encode Western anxieties about Africans and Muslims together (similarity 0.88)
• Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering (similarity 0.87)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters carried African anxieties into modern imaginaries (similarity 0.87)
• Blackness coded Muslim evil in medieval art, linking Muslims to Africans. (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval Muslim-monster imagery persists today through Gothic horror and Orientalism (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval art and text conflated Jews and Muslims into a single Saracen body (similarity 0.84)
• Dark skin signified sin and the devil in Christian theology from the fifth century. (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval monster imagery persists in modern political discourse about Muslims. (similarity 0.84)
• Muslim monsters were depicted as cannibals who ate their enemies. (similarity 0.84)
• Hell’s paintings filled with Jewish, Muslim, and African monsters torturing humans. (similarity 0.83)
• The aquiline nose functions as a recurring visual marker of Muslim monstrosity (similarity 0.83)
• The figure of the Muslim monster predates and shapes the modern Muslim stereotype (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians classed non-Egyptian Africans with Saracens as monstrous races (similarity 0.83)
• Dog-headed men served medieval art as both Jew and Muslim monsters of evil (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery #qualifies (0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201
• Oriental villains shaped the Muslim monsters of Gothic horror #expands (0.70)
• Orientalism sustains the credibility of preexisting Muslim monster images #expands (0.65)
• Dog-headed men served medieval art as both Jew and Muslim monsters of evil #expands (0.60)
• Jews and Muslims shared a canine monstrous identity in medieval literature #corroborates (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 226
• The presence of one monstrous figure conjured the other in medieval art. #corroborates (0.55)