Excerpt from The Art of the Saracens in Egypt

The subject of the following chapters is what has been commonly known as 'Arab' or 'Mohammadan' Art. Both these terms are misleading - for the artists in this style were seldom Arabs, and many of them were Christians - and the general term 'Saracenic' has therefore been substituted. 'Saracen,' which means simply Eastern, was the universal designation of Muslims in the Middle Ages, whether the paynims referred to were Syrian or Egyptian princes, like Saladin, or Barbary chiefs, or Moorish Alcaydes in Spain; and the mediaeval ring of the term Saracenic - which recalls the "proud Sarrasin" of the ballads, the Sarrasina artist of Italy, the Bysant Saracenatus of the Crusaders, and the stuff Saracenatum, or, as we spell it, "sarcenet' - is specially appropriate to the art about to be described. Saracenic art possesses an unmistakable style, which is instantly recognised wherever it occurs, from the pillars of Hercules and the Alcazar of Seville to the mosques of Samarkand and the ruins of Gaur in Bengal; and this style was developed and brought to perfection in the Middle Ages. The word Saracenic, implying the two ideas of Oriental and mediaeval, exactly fulfils the conditions of a general term for the art with which we are concerned.

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