The term Saracen absorbed Jews and Muslims into a single undifferentiated enemy.

Evidence

The numerous connections made between Jews and Muslims in the Christian imaginary result in a number of interesting literary and visual presentations. As noted earlier, during the medieval period “Saracen” becomes a widely used pejorative term. One example is that of the Jewish Sarrazin or Saracen, suggesting that in some instances Christians conflated Jews and Muslims into one body. In an image from the Holkham Bible (Figure 2.2), Ishmaelites are labeled as “sarrazins” and are portrayed with dark skin and turbans. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 170

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines how ‘Saracen’ functioned as a capacious pejorative absorbing both Jewish and Muslim bodies — the term did conceptual work before any real contact.
• XREF: The visual coding of Ishmaelites with dark skin and turbans links image to stigma, key for the reader tracing the manufactured monster across art.