Bede was not alone in his appraisal of the Saracens as a sign of the final reckoning. Sebeos identified the Saracens as one of the four Beasts of the Apocalypse, along with the Greeks, Sassanians, and the people of the "North." In other writings, Muslims are described as a "burning and lethal" poisonous wind, "setting alight the tall and beautiful trees in the garden," or as the Beast, complete with iron teeth and copper talons, or as a monster from the desert. There are also descriptions of Muhammad as a monster, including one that depicts him as a creature "with the head of a man, the neck of a horse and the body of a bird."

XREF: Connects to apocalyptic and monster literature of the early medieval Mediterranean, and to how religious others are dehumanized in polemical writing.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 148