While these images are identified as “Saracen,” Saracens, Turks, and Moors were interchangeable categories, exchangeable descriptors of the Muslim enemy. In most cases, “no clear distinction was popularly drawn between Turks and Saracens.” Much like the late twentieth century, when “the Arab” was often used as a symbol for all Muslims, the Saracen, Turk, and Moor served as fluid signifiers of Muslim identity in earlier centuries.

XREF: Parallels modern homogenization of Muslims/Arabs; echoes the comparison the text itself draws to late twentieth-century usage.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 323