The invention of the Hagarenes was due in part to the medieval racial classifications expounded by Isidore of Seville, who divided the people of the world into 72 types, all originating from Noah's sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. The offspring of Ham also played a role in racial constructions of Muslims through the identification of Saracens with Africans, who were classified as Hamitic. These powerful ideas are later seen in the efforts of Europeans to explain away the “high civilization” of the Egyptians, arguing that they must have been “Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro.” According to this logic, only a light-skinned race could have built the pyramids and other great monuments of Egypt.

XREF: Connects to racialization of Islam and the Hamitic hypothesis, relevant to postcolonial and critical race scholarship.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 158