The hyena’s traits inspired the medieval Jewish dog-headed monster

Evidence

The hyena ( yena) is another anti-Semitic “hate sign” identified with the Jew, offering “one of the most straightforward allegories” of the Jew as the devil found in these texts. The hyena resembles the dog-headed man in its identification as a canine, and the hyena’s voice resembles a human. In the stories told about cynocephalie in battle against Christian soldiers, they are often described as whinnying, barking, and howling, as hyenas do. I would postulate that the hyena, a popular symbol of Jews, inspired the Jewish dog-headed men of medieval lore. The cynocephalus is an old monster, one long associated with evil. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 216

Categorization

• QUESTION: The author postulates hyena-as-inspiration for cynocephalie; worth chasing whether any manuscript directly links the two or if this is her inference.
• XREF: This animal-to-monster transference of the hate sign is a mechanism the reader can carry forward to how Muslims get their own animal/monster hybrids later.