Often the Jewish and Muslim hybrid characters that exhibited “diseased and debased bodies” were located in the same space, presented as partners in evildoings against Christian innocents. Guibert of Nogent's descriptions of Jews as being deformed and infectious and Dante's image of both Muhammad and Ali's bodily degeneration in hell are but two examples.

XREF: Connects to broader scholarship on medieval antisemitism and Islamophobia as mutually reinforcing — e.g., work by Nirenberg and others on shared scapegoating. QUESTION: Worth asking how this rhetorical pairing of Jewish and Muslim bodies evolved or diverged in later centuries, especially in colonial contexts.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 169