Saracen

Saracen was a term used both in Greek and Latin writings between the 5th and 15th centuries to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Petraea and Arabia Deserta. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage. During the Early Middle Ages, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia.

Quotes

• Proud Saracen, pollute no more
  The shrines by martyrs built of yore!
  • Thomas Warton, the Younger, "The Crusade", Poems, new ed. (1777)

• We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
  We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
  Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
  Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
  But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
  With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.
  From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
  Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rûm.
  We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
  We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
  A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
  For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;
  And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
  And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
  And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
  And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
  For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a wave,
  And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.
  • James Elroy Flecker, "War Song of the Saracens", Forty-two Poems (1911)