During the American colonial era, stories of monsters were not uncommon. This is not surprising, given that early colonists were from the very places that invented or sustained the fantasies of monsterdom: “They were all at home in an intellectual terrain that was literally swarming with monsters.” Lands far away or recently discovered by Europeans were thought to be especially ripe for encounters with non-human creatures. Familiar Muslim characters, including monsters, also continued to reappear in the later centuries of modernity. In 1727, a popular Portuguese book described a frightening Turkish monster—a gargantuan figure whose breath caused a giant, eerie light to appear.

DEFINE: Clarifies the historical context: early American colonists' monster beliefs were imported from European intellectual traditions that already teemed with such fantasies.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 587