Samuel Agersnap Bone

University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen

29/05/2022

The Saracens of Song of Roland and

Aiol: Strange and Monstrous Heathens
By Samuel Agersnap Bone

Fri hjemmeopgave i faget historie

Saxo-Instituttet, Københavns Universitet
Eksaminator: Katrine Funding Højgaard
Forår 2022
Opgavens omfang: 44.439 tegn

1 Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews, 156

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Table of Contents

Introduction and thesis question ......................................... 3

Theory ...................................................................................... 4
Research discussion ................................................................ 4
Presentation of sources .......................................................... 7
Analysis:.................................................................................... 8
More than Muhammed: the Saracens as heathen,
polytheist idolaters .............................................................. 8
Giants, demi-humans and a (farting) Muhammed
statue ................................................................................... 10
Aiol and Mirabel – a Christian savior complex ........... 11
Saracen duality: demonic or virtuous? ........................... 13
Medieval Orientalism – an “adolescent” starting point?
............................................................................................. 15
Conclusion ............................................................................. 16
List of references .................................................................. 18

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Introduction
Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror, devastation, the
demonic, hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe, Islam was a lasting
trauma.2
As Edward Said notes above, Europe has historically had a long-lasting
negative pre-conception of Islam and the people in the Middle-East who
followed the religion – a people that was often coined under the (rather
dated) umbrella term of “Saracens”. In this paper, in my study of two
French3 epic poems belonging to the chansons de geste (both written
throughout the Crusades in the High Middle Ages), I will exemplify how
these negative stereotypes, fueled by pro-Christian and reversely anti-Muslim
ideology, were spread to a medieval European audience. Most medieval
Europeans had not encountered a Saracen, yet alone seen one. Therefore,
epic poems primarily spread through oral tradition, such as the chansons de
geste, helped foster an imagination of these distant, mysterious Saracens in
Europe. It is a goal of this study to examine how the negative imaginings of
the Saracens in Aiol: A Chanson de Geste4 and Song of Roland can be
understood through the lens of Said’s Orientalism. Furthermore, I will look
towards John McLeod’s postcolonial summary of Said’s book, which is
helpful as it may reframe and condense Said’s ideas, so they are easily
employed in my analysis.
Crusade literature such as the chansons de geste helped negative ideas of
Saracens stick within the Christian European’s mind. Although Said and
McLeod’s ideas are fundamentally postcolonial, I believe that their way of
describing the European view of the Orient, and thereby indirectly Saracens,
hold great value for the more literary analysis that I seek to do. Despite this
paper containing literary analysis that seeks to uncover the creation of the
monstrous and the “other”5, I will argue that the postcolonial ideas which
Said and McLeod lean upon also hold value when it comes to the Crusades,
as it is also a historical event about human control and Europe (the West)
exerting power. In Orientalism, European representations of the Orient do
not have a real referent. What is framed as a cultural meet between two
civilizations, does not have any basis in reality - as Said has emphasized, it is
rather a “theatrical stage” constructed by the West.6 The power dynamic has
historically been uneven, hegemonic in favor of the West. We witness this in
Aiol and Roland, as the Saracens are given strange and monstrous qualities
that do not have root in reality.

2 Said, Orientalism, 59.

3 The chansons de geste are originally French, for this study, I am using published English translations of
the texts.
4 I will refer to it as Aiol, and similarly Song of Roland as “Roland” to make the text more readable.
5 Some people may like to use quotation marks throughout, when using the words ”other”, “othered”

or ”othering”. I will consciously abstain to do so from this point, as it makes the text nicer to read (I
use the word a lot).
6 Said, Orientalism, 63

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Which leads me to my following thesis question: How are the Saracens

othered and made monstrous in Aiol and Song of Roland? Furthermore, how
can the negative descriptions of Saracens in them be interpreted through the
analytical lens of Edward Said’s Orientalism?

Theory
In this study I will look to combine the ideas of Said’s Orientalism with John
McLeod’s summary of Said’s ideas in Beginning Postcolonialism, as McLeod
makes Said’s ideas concise and easier to employ as analytical framework.
These summarizations by McLeod are divided into two categories: “The
shape of Orientalism” and “Stereotypes of the Orient and Orientals”. The
latter category will be of the most interest for this study, as I look to
examine how the Saracens were precisely stereotyped and imagined as
monstrous, strange and exotic. These categories are crucial in my analysis, as
I seek to show how the depictions of the Saracens in Aiol and Roland are
depicted according to these dynamics that were outlined in Orientalism. Here
is an example of such an overarching, key dynamic: “(…) the European
representation of the Muslim, Ottoman, or Arab was always a way of
controlling the redoubtable Orient”.7 In other words, the theoretical angle of
this study can be exemplified in this quote from Orientalism, as the two
chansons de geste essentially attempt to confine and control the Orient by
representing it as strange and monstrous. I will be using these stereotypes
from McLeod, supplemented with ideas from Said’s book, as tools for
analysis of Aiol and Roland. With Orientalism as my theoretical lens, I will
consider what the results of such an analysis of these chansons de geste can
yield, and how such an analysis can contribute to scholarly discussion.

Research discussion
Extensive research and discussion has been compiled on the chansons de geste.
One way in which I wish to add to this comprehensive discussion, is by
incorporating Aiol (a lesser discussed song) into the conversation. Moreover,
by limiting myself to two chansons de geste, it opens up possibilities to discuss
similarities and differences between the two. I believe that using Said &
McLeod’s theoretical framework as a way of reading Aiol & Roland, presents
interesting questions about Orientalism itself. What is the temporal origin,
the starting point of Orientalism? Can we, as John Tolan has proposed,
speak of an “adolescent Orientalism”8 in the Crusades of the High Middle
Ages? I believe this study can contribute to such a discussion.
Regarding medieval ideas of the Oriental, Said has said that:

7 Said, Orientalism, 60
8 Tolan, Saracens, 280

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

We thought that the Orient was imitating us, a rather narcissistic, self-
centered world-view. The source of these narcissistic Western ideas changed
in time, not their character. We find it commonly believed in twelfth and
thirteenth centuries that Arabia was on the fringe of the Christian world, a
natural asylum for heretical outlaws.9
This quote demonstrates the inherent narcissistic and superior ideas that
Christians have historically projected upon the Orient. What Said describes,
a peripheral world of imitating, heretical outlaws, is strikingly akin to what
we encounter in Aiol & Roland. If Christianity is believed to be what the
world revolves around, then everything else must be a pale imitation of that,
a degenerate offspring that misunderstands and twists it into something
horrible. This is the nature of how the Saracens and their religion are
portrayed in Aiol & Roland. That aside, the above quote by Said also
demonstrates an acknowledgement by Said that these ideas of the Oriental
are perpetual. Time changes in our world, but the character of the ideas
remain rooted in time, somehow. Some of these flawed, racist stereotypes of
the Orient remain in society today, although perhaps in a different state.
Within his category: “The shape of Orientalism”, McLeod argues that
Orientalism is a Western fantasy: “Orientalism constitutes a vision of the
Orient, it does not mirror what is there.”10 With that in mind, I contribute to
the discussion by posing that we can consider the Saracens in the chansons de
geste an early, yet essential Orientalist discourse, as the songs often construct
a negative, imaginary Saracen that is fantastical and monstrous, and does not
reflect reality.
Early discussion on the Saracens in chansons de geste includes C. Meredith
Jones’ 1942 study, “The Conventional Saracen of the Songs of Geste”.
Among the claims posed in this paper, Jones states that: “It was the crusades
which made necessary the encouraging of hatred and contempt for the
Saracen”.11 This claim, early as it may be, certainly alludes to the idea that the
Crusades were a way in which an early othering and hatred of the Saracens
was fostered in medieval Europe. In this way, this suggests that although
Orientalism (and imperialism), first came online in its full-fledged form
much later, the Crusades and the literature accompanying it nevertheless
played a role in planting seeds of Saracen contempt in European
imagination. While this article by Jones is insufficient on its own in terms of
making a convincing argument about medieval, adolescent Orientalism, it
does exemplify an early example of this line of thought. Jones also
emphasizes the influence of the chansons de geste: “(…) it matters little whether
or not the Moslems were represented in the poems accurately; for they
believed them to be so (…) A traditional type of ‘Saracen’ was invented and

9 Said, Orientalism, 62-63

10 McLeod, ”Reading colonial discourses,” 50
11 Jones, ”The Conventional Saracen of the Songs of Geste”, 203

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

reproduced endlessly”.12 This argument mirrors a key Orientalist argument:

reality does not matter in the Western vision of the Orient, and this
imaginary Saracen in the chansons de geste, “invented and reproduced
endlessly”, had lasting effect.
Another case which has been of interest within this field, and which bears
similarities to the Saracen depiction in chansons de geste, is that of Peter the
Venerable. In 1142-43, Peter, an abbot from Cluny, compiled two anti-
Islamic works in an attempt to refute Islam and convert any possible Muslim
reader to Christianity.13 In John Tolan’s chapter on Peter the Venerable in
Sons of Ishmael, Tolan depicts Peter the Venerable as a man who
systematically wanted to discredit Islam, but in reality only had a lacking,
surface-level understanding of the religion itself.14 Within the field, Peter the
Venerable represents a real-life, human equivalent to the chansons de geste, as
he attempts to expose Islam as heresy, while blatantly misrepresenting the
religion. Peter’s work differs to the chansons de geste in that his scriptures were
at least partially meant to be read by the Saracen audience, in hopes of
converting them, while the chansons de geste were for a European audience.
Furthermore, albeit non-fictional, Peter’s attempt to convert Saracens bears
similarities to the desperate attempt of Aiol (the protagonist of Aiol) to
convert Mirabel and make her his wife. Despite Islam being seen as heresy,
there was still a hope to save the Saracen pagans – to the degree that
converting a Muslim even was somewhat of a dream for some medieval
Christian writers.15
Another possible direction to take research on Saracens, is in that of
monster theory. Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture: Seven Theses” presents a
framework of seven theses that posit an understanding of cultures through
the monsters created within them.16 Such a framework could be of great
interest for a different study of Saracen monsters, perhaps focusing more on
what monsters say about the cultures they are shaped in. In contrast, my
study focuses more on the Oriental through the eyes of the West – how
monsters can be shaped by outsiders to a culture. Cohen presents this
chapter as an introduction17 to his book Monster Theory: Reading Culture, which
consists of an array of essays. One of those essays is Michael Uebel’s
“Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Responses to Saracen Alterity”.
Uebel labels monsters as “boundary phenomena” that blur categories and
serve as warnings about the fragile nature of borders, as monsters threaten
to dissolve the borders by challenging established understandings.18 A
different, hypothetical study could perhaps be made, by understanding the

12 Ibid, 204
13 Tolan, Sons of Ishamel, 46
14 Ibid, 46-63
15 Ibid, 78
16 Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”, 3
17 Ibid, 4
18 Uebel, “Unthinking the Monster”, 266

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Saracens of the chansons de geste as border phenomena that precisely challenge

the dominant and accepted Christian agenda. By threatening to present
another alternative worldview in Islam, Saracens thereby become monstrous
in the eyes of Christianity.

Presentation of sources
Roland (12th century) and Aiol (13th century) are both texts estimated to be
from the High Middle Ages, although the exact years of publication are
unknown. According to some scholars, Aiol has only recently begun to
receive the scholarly attention it deserves.19 This may partially be because it
only exists in a single physical manuscript form or because it has only
recently been translated, such as in the case of the translation I am using for
this project, which is the first English translation.20 I thought it would be
interesting to include Aiol in my analysis of this project as its lesser
popularity and the scholarly discussion surrounding it seems to stand in
quite stark contrast to my other main source, Roland, which may just be the
most famous chansons de geste. Roland, like Aiol, has no confirmed author. This
is a common “problem” with the chansons de geste and is worth mentioning.
However, it has to be considered that the chansons de geste is a group of
texts where the notion of author is more problematic than in other cases.
While the chansons de geste survive today in their written form, many written
works that we have today are longer, dramatized versions of the original
songs that were sung by the French public. As Andrew Taylor has suggested,
it is very unlikely that the 4000-line epic Song of Roland was ever recited by an
audience.21 On the contrary, it is more probable that a legend of Roland was
spread through oral tradition, and that the epic was subsequently composed
to immortalize it.22 It has been proposed that the author of Roland may be a
poet by the name of Turold, although this is not confirmed.23 Nevertheless,
although there were men such as Turold who were historically assigned to
write down these legends of Christian heroes, they were often not the point
of origin; they merely transcribed or created a physical version of the legend.
Taylor stresses that the songs have been performances, sometimes involving
jongleurs.24 Fundamentally, Taylor challenges the notion that there ever was
a Song of Roland as we know it – there were songs of Roland, performances
and oral deliveries that varied and did not have the same structure as the
surviving manuscript that we have today.25 Finally, I must disclaim that it
was easier to find information on the background of Roland, compared to

19 Jones “Aiol: A Chanson de Geste, Modern Edition and First English Translation” (review).
20Malicote & Hartman, Aiol
21 Taylor, Was There a Song of Roland, 65
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid, 37
24 Ibid, 37
25 Ibid, 64-65

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Aiol. Roland is arguably the most well-known of the chansons de geste, and thus
more has been written about the background of it.

Analysis

More than Muhammed: the Saracens as heathen, polytheist idolaters

Saracens and Islam are described quite similarly in Aiol and Roland, and the
ways in which they are described can be seen as somewhat emblematic of
general Christian fantasies about them in 12th and 13th century Europe.
Central to that understanding was the simple belief that anything Saracen
and Muslim was simply heresy, pagan. For many Western Europeans, as
John Tolan has put it, the words Saracens and pagans were virtually
interchangeable throughout the Middle Ages.26 This is visible in a very
blatant way, as Saracens are consistently referred to throughout Aiol and
Roland as simply pagans, heretics and heathens. Throughout Aiol, the knight
Aiol condemns and curses his enemies upon slaying them, such as seen here:
“Whore’s son, pagan, now you’ll get what you deserve”.27 In this way, he
performs his militarist identity as a warrior of Christianity as he not simply
slays them in battle, but also simultaneously emphasizes their inherent
inferiority and otherness as pagan Muslims through this speech act.
Before I get into how the Saracens were depicted as polytheist idolaters in
Aiol and Roland, I want to stress that this was not a true reflection of reality.
The Bible and the Quran both fundamentally contain the same revelation of
God, albeit delivered in different ways.28 In reality, Islam is a monotheistic
religion, with Allah and Muhammed to a degree mirroring the roles of God
and Jesus in Christianity. This is a simplified version of a more complicated
theological issue, but my point is that there are arguably more similarities
than differences between Christianity and Islam, as they essentially spring
from the same fountain. The Saracens and their religion were
misrepresented in order to other them further; as strange pagans that due to
their religion were fundamentally different to Christians. Bearing that in
mind, Saracens were not only made out to be pagans in Aiol and Roland, but
also idolaters and polytheists. They did not just follow Muhammed, but
rather a variety of idols deemed to be pagan by the Christians, including
Muhammed29, Apollin (Apollo), Jupiter, Mars and Tervagant. Perhaps not
surprisingly, Muhammed appears the most prominently in Aiol and Roland,
as the most heretical figure of them all. In Aiol, Mirabel suggests that the
other idols are under Muhammed’s control, as she refers to them as:

26 Tolan, Saracens, 128.

27 Malicote & Hartman, Aiol, 19.
28 Jensen, For de tørster nemlig uophørligt efter de kristnes blod, 12
29 The name appears in a variety of forms such as Mahound, Mahomet, and Mahoum, etc. I will use

Muhammed for clarity.

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

“Mohammed and his idols”.30 Therefore, despite the Saracens being

polytheist in their worship of many idols, it seems rather clear that
Muhammed remains above the other idols and is depicted as the archenemy
of Christianity and the antithesis to the Christian Jesus. This is certainly the
case in Roland: despite the roster of pagan idols appearing throughout,
Muhammed appears most often. In Roland, “Mahomet” is mentioned 17
times, whereas “Apollin” appears 6 times, and “Tervagent” 7 times.31
Perhaps more notably, the following is said about the Saracen king Marsilie
in Roland: “he worships Mahomet, and calls upon Apollin”.32 This suggest
that there might be a fundamental difference in the Saracen idolatry in
Roland - Muhammed is worshipped, whereas the other idols are in contrast
called upon, invoked.33 This seems likely to be the case, as it is specifically
Muhammed that is used to curse Christians with34 and from whom they ask
for help.35
It remains rather vague why each individual idol was imagined in chansons
de geste to be worshipped by the Saracens. On the topic of Termagent, for
instance (aka. Tervagent), Hugh Goddard has remarked rather perplexedly
that it is a divinity “whose identity is not at all clear”.36 It seems plausible
that idols such as Apollin, Jupiter and Mars are included due to ancient
Roman and Greek worship of the deities, and were familiar to include for
the writers of chansons de geste. Nevertheless, the construction of the Saracens
as polytheists underlines their paganism, which perhaps can serve as an
explanation towards why the Saracens are depicted worshipping multiple
idols. Fundamentally, chansons de geste were written to glorify Christianity’s
triumph under the Crusades and reversely emphasize the heathenism and
defeat of the Saracens. By the very nature of writing Saracens as polytheists,
they are depicted as greater opposites of the monotheist Christians. This
construction of opposites, Islam and Saracens as fundamentally the opposite
of the European Christian, is exactly something which John McLeod also
includes as one of his points under what shapes Orientalism: “1. Orientalism
constructs binary oppositions”.37 McLeod describes how, within
Orientalism, the “Orient is conceived as being everything that the West is
not, its ‘alter ego’”.38 This relationship between Islam and Christianity as
binary oppositions within Orientalism often results in Islam coming off as
being bad or even evil, whereas Christianity represents the fundamentally
good. In Aiol and Roland, the religions are opposites: Christians worship the
one true God, whereas the Saracens in Aiol and Roland are polytheist

30 Malicote & Hartman, Aiol, 158.

31 Crosland, Roland.
32 Ibid, 2.
33 Ibid, 69.
34 Ibid, 34.
35 Ibid, 39.
36 Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 92.
37 McLeod, ”Reading colonial discourses,” 49.
38 Ibid, 49.

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Samuel Agersnap Bone
University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

idolaters: through the usage of binary oppositions, the otherness and pagan
nature of the Saracens is further constructed.

Giants, demi-humans and a (farting) Muhammed statue

In Aiol and Roland, the reader is met with an array of oddities that make the
Saracens and their armies seem strange, which is part of the elaborate
othering of them. Another of John McLeod’s stereotypes of the Oriental is,
rather simply, “2. The Orient is strange”.39 The following examples will
emphasize how the Saracen armies were imagined as peculiar in terms of
their animal, sub-human or monstrous traits. In Roland, the Saracen king
Marsilie unites a variety of different armies to fight under his rule against the
Christians. Some of these armies and peoples are described as simply
strange, others are downright sub-human or monsters. Amongst those
described are: “(…) large-headed men of Micenes who have bristles like pigs
all along the backbone”.40 These men of Micenes are, due to their bristles,
likened to pigs, which is typically seen as a very gross and unclean animal.
Another example is the troop described as such: “men from desert Occian.
It is a troop of men who serve not God, you will never hear tell of greater
felons – their skins are as hard iron so that they have no need of helmet or
hauberk, and they are evil and fierce in the battle.”41 These men from desert
Occian are not spoken about in strictly negative terms, as they are also
praised for being fierce in battle, but they are definitely yet portrayed as odd
and strange in terms of their iron skin and being ungodly, which was
certainly something that was held in poor regard. Lastly, in Roland, the
“giants of Malprose”42 are also referred to as fighting alongside the Saracens,
under Marsilie. Thus we witness not only a blurring of lines between human
and monstrous, but also something convincingly monstrous thrown into the
mix of the Saracen armies. There are many other examples of making the
Saracens monstrous and othered, such as Saracens yapping like dogs43 and
describing Ethiopians as “(…) the accursed people who are blacker than ink
(…)”44, giving them demonic associations.45 These examples all cohesively
combine in Roland, to make the Orient a truly strange, monstrous place.
Returning to McLeod, he describes that: “If the Occident is rational,
sensible and familiar, then the Orient is irrational, extraordinary, bizarre”.46
However, perhaps even more crucial is McLeod’s comment that: “(…)
ultimately its radical oddness was considered evidence enough of the

39 Ibid, 53.
40 Crosland, Roland, 64.
41 Ibid, 64.
42 Ibid, 65.
43 Ibid, 69.
44 Ibid, 39.
45 Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews, 83.
46 McLeod, ”Reading colonial discourses,” 53.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Orient’s intriguing inferiority”.47 In Roland we witness an amalgamation of

strange armies come together under the Saracen and Muslim banner, armies
that are fantastical and monstrous. Imagining the enemy as giants, big-
headed swine-like fighters and ungodly felons with iron skin, helps other the
enemy, as it is depicted as something far from what is known as the good,
Christian human. This othering in Roland helps justify the slaughter of the
Saracens: in addition to their depiction as ungodly pagans, their monstrous
and strange attributes further makes them inferior.
Another scenario that stands out as strange is a scene from Aiol, in which
Makaire is taken into the Muslim king Mibrien’s palace, and to a so-called
“Mohammedry”, where Muhammed was said to be.48 Naturally, the
Muhammed figure is not actually the prophet, but rather a statue of him,
hollowed out, with a Saracen peasant inside. Makaire is asked to show a sign
of devotion towards Muhammed: “And next, you’ll kiss my asshole. This
will mean that you’ve given yourself to me”.49 He is subsequently farted in
the face.50 However gross or comedic this scenario may seem, it represents
an example of how Christianity consistently attempted to devalue or ridicule
Islam in the chansons de geste. Alongside depicting the religion as polytheist,
there were attempts such as this that sought to emphasize the inferiority of
Islam in a rather comedic manner. This also represents another way in which
the Orient could be framed as radically bizarre and even laughable, therefore
being inferior to Christianity, which in contrast stands out as a noble,
virtuous religion.

Aiol and Mirabel – a Christian savior complex

Aiol’s heroic rescue of Mirabel, daughter of the Muslim king Mibrien, is
central to the plot of Aiol. Aiol views his task as a noble mission; he must
save Mirabel from the claws of the pagan Saracens, and convert her to
become his Christian wife. Upon meeting her, Aiol tells Mirabel that he
wants her to come with him to France, “the good country”, where he wants
her to be baptized and become his Christian wife. Mirabel reacts to this by
“nearly losing her mind”51. Mirabel continues to vehemently reject Aiol’s
proposition to come with him to become his Christian wife, even stating in
response to that idea, that: “I’ll never be tempted to commit such a great sin.
Mohammed’s law will never be shamed by me. I’d much rather be killed or
destroyed and dragged behind horses by their tails!”52 Mirabel later changes
her mind, when Aiol defeats four Saracens in battle. She now states that she
wishes to be baptized, and believes in the Christian God as: “(…)

47 Ibid, 53.
48 Malicote & Hartman, Aiol, 246.
49 Ibid, 246.
50 Ibid, 246.
51 Ibid, 136.
52 Ibid, 136.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Mohammed’s powers have been dashed to earth, When all alone you cut off
the heads of the four Saracens, who don’t believe in God.”53 In this sense,
Aiol wins Mirabel’s love and manages to convert her through battle, as a
solider in holy war. As Mirabel watches her fellow Saracen soldiers fall, she
is convinced that Christianity must be the “true” religion. It is after all the
chansons de geste, which will traditionally have Christianity triumph above all.
The dynamic in Aiol and Mirabel’s relationship can be viewed in light of
McLeod’s stereotype no. 5: “The Orient is feminine”.54 In this definition,
McLeod describes the masculine West and the feminine East as opposites:
In Orientalism, the East as a whole is ‘feminised’, deemed passive,
submissive, exotic, luxurious, sexually mysterious and tempting, while the
West is thought of as the ‘masculine’ – that is, active, dominant, heroic,
rational, self-controlled and ascetic. 55
Aiol and Mirabel’s relationship throughout Aiol seems to follow the
above formula that McLeod describes to a tee. Despite the fact that Mirabel
initially strongly refuses Aiol’s approaches to make her his wife and a
Christian, she eventually succumbs to his wishes, serving as an example of
the passive Oriental feminine. In contrast, Aiol performs the dominant and
heroic role that McLeod describes. Throughout Aiol, Christianity and Islam
are presented as quite simple, binary opposites – Christianity is good and
right, and Islam is evil and wrong. Mirabel is an apt example of the Oriental
feminine, as she seems to have little agency, the Christian hero simply
subjects his will onto her. McLeod notes submissive language for the
Oriental as something essentially Orientalist: “the Orient is ‘penetrated’ by
the traveler whose ‘passions’ it rouses, it is ‘possessed’, ‘ravished’, ‘embraced’
– and ultimately ‘domesticated’ by the male colonizer”.56 This vocabulary,
which McLeod calls “specifically sexual”57, furthermore underlines the
dominant, Christian, white male hero as the masculine, as he exerts his will
upon the passive feminine. This vocabulary matches what is going on in
Aiol, as the protagonist Aiol instantly attempts to domesticate Mirabel, and
make her his wife – she is ‘embraced’ and ‘possessed’ by the male
colonizer.58
The dichotomy between Mirabel and the other male Saracens is a stark
and strange one. Mirabel is talked about in almost only positive terms (the
only negative mentions are of her former religion), being praised as the most
beautiful person Aiol has seen59, and personality-wise being “worthy, astute,
and well-educated”.60 These traits attributed to Mirabel make her seem like a

53 Ibid, 142.
54 McLeod, ”Reading colonial discourses,” 54.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Malicote & Hartman, Aiol, 136
60 Ibid, 149.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
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fine, noble Saracen lady, and stand in enormous contrast to the other
barbaric Saracens, who Aiol seeks to murder without second thought, and
who are described as evil and devilish.61 Mirabel is also referred to as a pagan
before she converts: “If she were a Christian, Aiol would have wanted to
kiss her, But because she was a pagan, he didn’t want to touch her.”62 From
that we can learn that Aiol does not stop considering her a pagan, just
because he is in love with her - being a pagan is definitive. We also learn that
Mirabel is an exception, and not representative of a larger trend:
“Afterwards, she began to reflect, with great nobility – Never will you hear
such thoughts spoken by a Saracen woman.”63 This quote attests that
Mirabel does not represent a general positive outlook on Saracen women in
Aiol, as it is implied that Saracen women are never noble. Mirabel seems to
be an outlier, someone who in the narrative is predestined to become Aiol’s
Christian wife, and therefore exhibits traits that reflect that destiny. Through
Mirabel, Aiol enacts a heroic “Christian savior” role by delivering her away
from the clutches of evil. This is a situation in which Mirabel has little
agency, as she merely witnesses Aiol slay her fellow Saracens in the name of
Christianity. Furthermore, Aiol can be compared to some sort of missionary,
as the story presents Mirabel as a helpless damsel in distress, in need of
Christian saving: he is simply doing the right thing by attempting to convert
her.

Saracen duality: demonic or virtuous?

While this study specifically seeks to examine the strangeness and monstrous
qualities often attributed to the Saracens in medieval literature, it would be
amiss and an outright misrepresentation to claim that they were only
represented negatively. Despite the aforementioned negative representations
of the Saracens, Roland actually also contains many positive, even admirable
mentions of Saracens. In comparison to Roland, Aiol certainly portrays
Saracens in a more negative light, almost exclusively so (Mirabel is the
exception). This is partially why I thought Aiol would be a good fit for this
study, as it demonstrates Aiol’s pure hatred for the Saracen pagans.
However, as other scholars have mentioned, the chansons de geste do not
exclusively paint Saracens as evil demons. Debra Higgs Strickland has said
the following about the Saracens in chansons de geste:
(…) which (the chansons de geste, ed.) were just as likely to describe the
Saracen opponents as admirable foes embodying many noble and chivalric
qualities as they were to characterize them demonic and depraved.64

61 Ibid, 185.
62 Ibid, 153.
63 Ibid, 139.
64 Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews, 188.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

As mentioned, this duality is evident in Roland. One of the notable

Saracens in Roland, Abisme, is the epitome of that ambiguity: “He (Abisme,
ed.) is a man of evil character and many crimes; (…) No one ever saw him
laugh or play; but he is courageous and very daring”.65 This quote
emphasizes the core of how many Saracens are described in Roland:
fundamentally they are evil and pagans, which justifies their slaughter, but
yet they are also ambivalently depicted with many positive traits, such as
those attributed to Abisme.
Although Aiol may be able to strike down a Saracen, and mournfully
express: “had he only been a Christian”66, the nature of not being Christian,
being pagan, is exactly what defines them. In other words, it is made out to
be a very simple, yet conclusive divide: “The heathens are in the wrong and
the Christians are in the right.”67 John Tolan has suggested that the Saracens
were othered, but not too much, as it is: “not valorous to slaughter mere
beasts. Hence the paradoxical, mixed nature of the Saracen host in Roland
(…)”.68 As Tolan suggests, we witness a dual perception of the Saracens in
Roland: on one hand we meet Saracen warriors that are often brave and
valorous, imagined as worthy warriors. Yet the Saracens are othered in many
other ways, as e.g. they fight amongst a terrifying roster of sub-humans and
monsters, which in part makes it easier to condemn their existence and
justify their slaughter. Mirabel in Aiol further exemplifies how Saracens
could be depicted positively in chansons de geste. However, as I have alluded to,
Mirabel seems to be the exception to how the Saracens are portrayed in Aiol
rather than the rule. In Aiol, male Saracens, and really any Saracen but
Mirabel, are described exclusively in a negative manner. An example of this
is the Saracen envoy Tornebeuf, who is described as follows:
Never had an uglier man been seen. He had one large eye and the other
was small. He didn’t have a stitch of clothing on him. He could run of foot
faster than a nag And carried an oaken cudgel. It had three hundred solid
iron nails. (…) You’d have seen people fleeing before him, Ladies and
maidens of noble mien, Leaning over walls to see him.69
Although this quote might at first seem unnecessarily lengthy, I wish to
highlight it as it emphasizes the extreme difference between two Saracens in
Aiol: Tornebeuf and Mirabel. Here, we encounter Tornebeuf, who fits the
mold of the imaginary barbarian, the othered Saracen. The image of a
hideous, naked man with the stereotypical barbaric weapon of choice, an
oaken cudgel with nails, is a striking one, especially for an envoy with
diplomatic, formal responsibilities. The fact that the Saracen royalty would
send such a man as an envoy does not reflect too well on their character, it
suggests that they are uncivilized. And that image of Tornebeuf certainly

65 Crosland, Roland, 31.

66 Ibid, 63.
67 Ibid, 22.
68 Tolan, Saracens, 126.
69 Malicote and Hartman, Aiol, 101.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

contrasts with the one of Mirabel, which is almost the exact opposite: she is
constructed as a rather noble woman, whose values align with those often
expected of an educated Christian woman. Thus the image of Saracens in
Aiol and Roland is not one-dimensional as merely monstrous, as the title of
this study might at first imply, but really rather fragmented and disjointed.
Saracens were certainly made to be monstrous and barbaric, and almost
always heretical pagans. However, in a lot of cases they are also seen as
rather noble warriors that the Christians may even admire to a certain point.
Ultimately, the one thing that divides and condemns the medieval Saracens
in the eyes of Christians, whether they are ugly beasts or proud warriors, is
their religious belief.

Medieval Orientalism – an “adolescent” starting point?

What little Said has to say about the Middle Ages lacks context, as if
medieval authors who wrote about Islam lived in a social and political void.
Medieval Orientalism is at once timeless and immature; an “adolescent”
Orientalism, waiting for the political and social context of modern European
Empires.70
As John Tolan notes here, Said’s main focus with Orientalism was never the
Middle Ages. However, I believe there is value in Tolan’s idea of an
“adolescent”, medieval Orientalism. Orientalism is largely built on prejudice
towards the Oriental, and the Crusades serve as early encounters of the West
judging and stereotyping the Oriental as seen in the chansons de geste. As I have
sought to exemplify, many of these stereotypes in Aiol and Roland have no
referent in reality, they are built on fantasy, and are frankly nonsense that
enforced an elaborate “us vs. them” image. The most obvious examples of
this is the polytheism and the fantastical nature of the Saracen armies, both
easily disproven as mere fiction.
Said himself has said that: “Orientalism can also express the strength of
the West and the Orient’s weakness – as seen by the West.”71 If this is an
example of a deeply Orientalist dynamic, then, perhaps, Aiol and Roland can
also be seen as containing this “adolescent Orientalism” that Tolan speaks of.
The Orient in these texts is consistently shown to be degenerate and wrong
in terms of the Saracens’ religion, and thereby, by nature of being pagan, the
Orient is also weak. In other words, we can hypothesize that the Oriental
depicted in these two chansons de geste is yet to completely unravel, it is
adolescent Orientalism, but it is there. Aiol and Roland are medieval texts, thus
the Oriental at the time of writing had not been fully subjected to imperialism
and colonialism, and the Crusades were just part of a beginning historical
trend of stereotyping and undermining Muslims.72 Despite the Middle Ages

70 Tolan, Saracens, 280.

71 Said, Orientalism, 45.
72 Jensen, For de tørster nemlig uophørligt efter de kristnes blod, 207.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

largely being pre-imperial and pre-colonial, Aiol and Roland regardless bear
many fundamental traits of Orientalism, and I believe that we in them witness
early traits of Orientalism in how Europe attempts to undermine and
essentially dispose of the Islamic Orient.

Conclusion
The othering of the Saracens in Aiol and Roland is less straightforward than I
initially anticipated. I certainly expected that they would be monstrous,
strange heathens – the title of this study has not changed since the very start.
Now, what surprised me was how varied the depictions of Saracens could
be. I have uncovered that the Saracen of Aiol and Roland is paradoxical and
multifaceted. Even though the Saracens certainly are assigned plenty of nasty
stereotypes, as my usage of McLeod’s stereotype categories suggests, we
encounter plenty of different Saracens – Tornebeuf, Mirabel and Abisme are
all imagined in different ways. On one hand the Saracens may be imagined
as noble warriors, and yet those very admirable qualities are entirely cast
aside, they do not matter. Their status as heathens is universal, ultimate, and
therefore any positive attributes they are ascribed do not save them from
slaughter by the Christians. As I have mentioned, the dualistic nature of their
being probably comes down to a wish to not fully other them as monsters. If
they were entirely portrayed as mindless beasts, the victories of the
Christians in an essentially holy war, would suddenly be less noble, maybe
even unholy. By depicting them as worthy warriors, while simultaneously
othering them as significantly different, even opposites to Christians, the
Crusades are justified and admirable. After all, the chansons de geste were songs
of heroes, conducted to celebrate the victories of Christianity. Nevertheless,
there are plenty examples of the Saracens being made monstrous or strange.
The roster of monstrosities in Roland’s Saracen army and the ridiculous
Muhammed statue in Aiol, both stand out as examples as making the
Oriental weird and degenerate. The Saracens are less humane, and their
religion is made to be crucially laughable as well as fundamentally inferior to
Christianity.
Using Said’s Orientalism alongside McLeod’s categorization of Said’s
theory on Aiol and Roland, has allowed me to suggest that they may contain a
medieval, “adolescent Oriental”73, also suggested by John Tolan. I have
demonstrated how the Saracens in Aiol and Roland are depicted according to
an Orientalist stereotyping, which I believe suggests that the Saracens of the
Crusades can be seen as a precursor to later Orientalism, this adolescent
iteration. Furthermore, keeping Orientalism in mind can help the reader of the
chansons de geste be aware of larger connections, that there is a historical
tradition surrounding the Oriental – some ideas of the Oriental from the

73 Tolan, Saracens, 280.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Crusades persist today. Stereotyping the Oriental is very much alive and
thriving in present society. We seem to exist in a perpetual wake of 9/11, as
negative prejudice of the Oriental seems stronger than ever, or at least more
visible to the public. A 2017 study by Lüfti Sunar attests to an increase in
Western Islamophobia – from 2015 to 2016 anti-muslim bias incidents
increased by 57%, and hate crimes by 44%.74 Sunar posits in the study that
Islamophobia is becoming “mainstream in the West”75, especially in USA. In
practice, racial profiling in airport security checks is an obvious example of
Oriental stereotypes being enforced, that the Oriental is seen as radically
different, unreliable or dangerous. Another is the brutal reality of job
searching with physical attributes or names that may suggest an “Oriental”
background. The legacy of the Crusades, however, does not just persist in
the West. Hugh Goddard has noted the how the Crusades have left a
“powerful legacy of mistrust in the Arab world and throughout the Muslim
world, and the crusading world is not forgotten.”76 Such a legacy of mistrust
towards the West in the Arab world may prove difficult to get rid of,
especially if this Western trend of Islamophobia persists.
Naturally, this study is not reflective of all chansons de geste; they belong to
a very comprehensive collection that vary a lot in content, and selecting
other chansons de geste may have yielded very different results. I went ahead
with this study having in mind that the texts needed to contain instances of
the Saracens being depicted as monstrous, as that is what I wanted to
examine. Therefore the very selection of these two texts is not random, and
is by default chosen with my bias of searching for something specific in
mind, they are not selected randomly. With that in mind, picking other
chansons de geste that did not depict the Saracens as negatively, may have
resulted in a very different conclusion.
My own background and the bias that might follow may also have
subconsciously influenced this study. I grew up in Nørrebro, a multicultural
neighborhood in Copenhagen; some of my best friends growing up were
Muslims. I also went to an international school, where an estimate 50-60%
in my class from ages 6-13 were Muslims. As I have grown up alongside
Muslims, has played into my interest to analyze the othering, the prejudice
and the demonizing discourse surrounding Islam. I definitely went into this
study with the angle of such prejudice being unjust and a lasting issue in
modern society. Looking at the Crusades, a possible medieval point of origin
for some of these stereotypes surrounding Muslims in Europe is only one
way to go about such research. Nevertheless, it remains an influential point
in history as the Crusades were part of beginning an “us and them”
dichotomy between Christians and Muslims, as Muslims alongside the Jews
were launched into the mix as a de facto enemy of Christianity.

74 Lüfti, “The Long History of Islam as a Collective ‘Other’,” 46.

75 Ibid, 35.
76 Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 91

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Having talked about time and modern perspectives, it seems apt to end
on the topic of time. The idea of the Orient as timeless is crucial within
Orientalism: “Of itself, in itself, as a set of beliefs, as a method of analysis,
Orientalism cannot develop. Indeed, it is the doctrinal antithesis of
development.”77 Said posits Orientalism as a form of analysis as being static,
unable to develop. Orientalism as a method of analysis does not develop,
because it is built upon the assumption that time is static within the Orient
itself, preventing change. McLeod has also ascribed to this idea – one of his
stereotypes of the Orient is: “The Orient is timeless”.78 McLeod explains
that within Orientalism: “The Orient is considered to be essentially no
different in the eighteenth century than it was in the twelfth, trapped behind
the modern developments of the ‘enlightened’ West.”79 With this in mind, it
is plausible to see the medieval, Oriental Saracen as comparable to the
modern, negatively stereotyped Muslim. A Westerner who yet has the
outlook of a classic Orientalist, will accordingly stereotype the Oriental Arab
negatively, regardless of time. Although the Orient according to the above
quote is a timeless place, what is crucial is that the Orient for the Orientalist
is a place that will always be temporally behind the West, and thus the Orient
is infinitely inferior.80 Almost a thousand years later, a Westerner may
stereotype a Muslim on the street, in a similarly prejudicial way a Medieval
European might have thought about a Saracen in the chansons de geste.

List of references

Sources

Crosland, Jessie. The Song of Roland (English translation). Cambridge, Ontario: In

parentheses publications, Old French Series. 1999.

Hartman, A. Richard and Sandra C. Malicote.. Aiol: A Chanson de Geste: First English
Translation. Italica Press, Inc, 2014

Research literature

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”. In Monster Theory:

Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3-25. University of Minnesota
Press, 1996

Goddard, Hugh. A History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Chicago, Ill: New

Amsterdam Books, 2000.

77 Said, Orientalism, 307.

78 McLeod, ”Reading Colonial Discourses”, 52.
79 Ibid, 52.
80 Ibid, 52.

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University of Copenhagen - Dyr og Monstre i Middelalderen
29/05/2022

Jensen, Kurt Villads. For de tørster nemlig uophørligt efter de kristnes blod: kristne
middelalderlige skrifter om islam. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2013.

Jones, C. Meredith. “The Conventional Saracen of the Songs of Geste”. Speculum,

Vol. 17, No. 2 (April 1942), 201-225. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of
the Medieval Academy of America.

McLeod, John. “Reading colonial discourses”. In Beginning Postcolonialism, 44-79.

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2010.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Strickland, Debra Higgs. ”Saracens, Tartars & Other Crusader Fantasies”. In

Saracens, Demons and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art, 157-210. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2003.

Strickland, Debra Higgs. ”Demons, Darkness & Ethiopians”. In Saracens, Demons

and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art, 61-94. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2003.

Sunar, Lüfti. “The Long History of Islam as a Collective “Other” of the West and
the Rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. after Trump”. Summer 2017, Vol 19. Iss. 3,
35-51. Insight Turkey, 2017

Taylor, Andrew. “Was There a Song of Roland?” Speculum 76, no. 1 (2001): 28–65.
2001.

Tolan, John Victor. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York :
Columbia University Press. 2002.

Tolan, John Victor. Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages.
University Press of Florida. 2008.

Uebel, Michael. “Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Responses to Saracen

Alterity”. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen,
264-291. University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Internet pages

Jones, Catherine M.”Aiol: A Chanson de Geste (review)”. The Medieval Review, 2014.
Italica Press, Inc. http://www.italicapress.com/index442.html#ElyeRev1. Seen on
May 9 2022.

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