Saracens

Saracens, a name variously employed by mediæval writers to designate the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine, the Arabs generally, or the Arab-Berber races of Northern Africa, who conquered Spain and Sicily, and invaded France. At a later date it was employed as a synonym for all infidel nations against which crusades were preached, and was thus applied to the Seljuks of Iconium, the Turks, the Gypsies, and even the pagan Prussians. The true derivation of the word was long a puzzle to philologists; Du Cange deduced it from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, an opinion coinciding with that of the mediæval Christian authors; Hottinger, from the Arab. saraca, 'to steal'; Forster, from sahra, 'a desert'; while others strove to see its origin in the Hebrew sarak, 'poor'; but the opinion which has been most generally supported, and prevails at the present time, is that the word was originally Sharkeyn (Arab., 'eastern people'—as opposed to Maghribe, 'western people'—i.e. the people of Morocco), corrupted by the Greeks into Sarakēnoi, from which the Romans derived their word Saraceni. The epithet Sarakenoi was applied by the Greek writers (from the 1st century of the Christian era) to some tribes of Bedouin Arabs in eastern Arabia, though they do not agree among themselves as to the particular tribe so denominated. Pliny and Ammianus place the Saracens in Arabia Petrea and Mesopotamia, on the common frontier of the Roman and Persian empires; and the description of them by Ammianus, a most painstaking and accurate historian, coincides, in every important particular, with what is known at the present day of the Bedouin tribes of those regions. See ARABIA, CALIFES, CRUSADES, MOHAMMEDANISM, MOORS, SALADIN, SPAIN, TEMPLARS; and for Saracenic architecture, see ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE, and the section on architecture in the articles INDIA (Vol. VI. p. 109) and PERSIA (Vol. VIII. p. 70).