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Saracen   Listen
Saracen

noun
1.
(historically) a member of the nomadic people of the Syrian and Arabian deserts at the time of the Roman Empire.
2.
(when used broadly) any Arab.
3.
(historically) a Muslim who opposed the Crusades.






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"Saracen" Quotes from Famous Books



... horse, there is no knowing what splendid adventures might have befallen him, but at a critical moment, the Hippogrif vanished, and Prince Roger had to fare as best he could on foot. After a time he met Bradamante again, he left the Saracen religion and became a Christian, and he and Bradamante were united in wedlock. He had formerly been ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... my sight, to which this hour will not be very old, in which from the pulpit it shall be forbidden to the brazen-faced dames of Florence to go displaying the bosom with the paps. What Barbarian, what Saracen women were there ever who required either spiritual or other discipline to make them go covered? But if the shameless ones were aware of that which the swift heaven is preparing for them, already would they have their mouths open for howling. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... there came a day when the army was in line of battle against the Saracen; when the Knights of the Temple vied with the knights of other orders each striving to carry their flag farthest into that thorny jungle of flashing scimitars, and the huge arm of King Richard the Lion-hearted hewed a red road for them all which none ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... the very beginners of Mohammedan architecture, at a time when the style was still plastic and in course of growth, and the beauty of Saracenic art is due to no small extent to the use of it; but in the employment of this feature the Western architect advanced much further than the Saracen even at his best could go. The pointed architecture of the Middle Ages, with its daring construction, its comprehensive design, its elaborate mouldings, and its magnificent sculptures, is far more highly developed ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... information when we want it, and we want it at every step in this old Touraine, which is filled with history and romance. She also reminds us that between Tours and Poitiers was fought the great battle between the Saracen invaders and the French, under Charles Martel, which turned back the tide of Mohammedism and secured for France and Europe the blessings of Christianity, and that in the Chateau of Plessis-les-Tours the famous treaty was made between Henry III and his kinsman, Henry ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... houses, its domes, its crumbling amber walls, with ragged date-palms scattered here and there, and dusty green clumps of prickly pear scrawming about everywhere. But as a walled city its days are done. The massive gateway with its pitting of Saracen round-shot has no guard. The two fosses are planted thickly with grotesquely gnarled olive-trees. The streets are clean and the houses are in good repair, but there is a lazy old-time air about the place that would clog the hurrying feet of ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... obeyed. She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... a Merchantman," in which one pirate, dressed in woman's clothes, stood up above the bulwarks waving for assistance, while the cutlassed ruffians crouched below ready to do their bloody work when the other ship came near enough. Nor have we forgotten The Saracen's Head, at Ware, whence we went exploring down the little river Lea on Izaak Walton's trail; nor The Swan at Bibury in Gloucestershire, hard by that clear green water the Colne; nor another Swan at Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, which one reaches ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... hillock that rose from the valley-plain; a small newly-built church leaned against its eastern declivity, and it was fortified on all sides by walls and dikes, behind which the citizens found shelter when they were threatened by the Saracen robbers of the oasis. This hill passed for a particularly sacred spot. Moses was supposed to have prayed on its summit during the battle with the Amalekites while his arms were held up ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... know that the chief of the house, long, long, long ago, when sleeping in the heat of noon in Palestine in the first crusade, had been awakened by a grasshopper lighting on his eyelids, and so had been aroused in time to put on his armor and do battle with a troop attacking Saracen cavalry, and beat them; wherefore, in gratitude, he had taken the humble field-creature ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... head, but by throwing himself over him he had saved him from a second body of flame rolled down the height in the same direction. The duke was thanking his youthful deliverer when some soldiers came up, looking for him, to apprise him that the Saracen power was beginning an attack on the opposite wing of the army. Without losing a word Alba threw himself on the first horse brought him and galloped away to the spot where the most ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... the Saracen's Head Inn, at Glasgow, I was made happy by good accounts from home; and Dr Johnson, who had not received a single letter since we left Aberdeen, found here a great many, the perusal of which entertained him much. He enjoyed in imagination the comforts which we could now command, and ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... dreamed, as he walked round the shadow-filled porch, full of figures in prayer and figures holding scrolls, of the white-robed knights, their red crosses, their long swords, and their banner called Beauseant. He dreamed himself Grand Master of the Order; saw himself in chain armour charging the Saracen. The story of the terrible idol with the golden eyes, the secret rites, the knight led from the penitential cell and buried at daybreak, the execution of the Grand Master at the stake, turned in his head fitfully; cloud-shapes that passed, floating, changing incessantly, suddenly ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... of the Greek emperor, and distinguished his courage against the encroachments of the Saracens. In a battle there, he took prisoner a certain gentleman, by name M. Zadisky, of Greek extraction, but brought up by a Saracen officer; this man he converted to the Christian faith; after which he bound him to himself by the ties of friendship and gratitude, and he resolved to continue with his benefactor. After thirty years ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... of his, for instance, in his sickness, when he had seemed to be dead, and what might be the true duty of man. To be brave and upright? Surely. To fight for the Cross of Christ against the Saracen? Surely, if the chance came his way. What more? To abandon the world and to spend his life muttering prayers like those priests in the darkness behind him? Could that be needful or of service to God or man? To man, perhaps, because such folk tended the sick and fed the poor. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... Granada has found once more the shelter of an African desert, and even a Saracen horse, in an estate which comes to it from Saracens. How the eyes of these brigands—who but yesterday had dreaded my authority—sparkled with savage joy and pride when they found they were protecting against the King of Spain's vendetta ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... have brushed those clothes, sir, as you ordered me."—Harley nodded his head but Peter observed that his hat wanted brushing too: his master nodded again. At last Peter bethought him that the fire needed stirring; and taking up the poker, demolished the turban'd head of a Saracen, while his master was seeking out a body for it. "The morning is main cold, sir," said Peter. "Is it?" said Harley. "Yes, sir; I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries he had picked for Mrs. Margery. There was a rare junketting ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... a Saracen maiden, Brunette, statuesque, The reverse of grotesque; Her pa was a bagman at Aden, Her mother she played ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... great name of Courtenay, Courtney, of French local origin, is derived in an Old French epic from court nez, short nose, an epithet conferred on the famous Guillaume d'Orange, who, when the sword of a Saracen giant removed this important feature, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... attempting to master it. You Christians make saints to serve you, and because your interests are not all alike you blame the saints for not doing what is obviously impossible. Now, I know that he whom you call St. Vincent loved the tongue of a woman no better than the scimitar of the Saracen, and for this reason did he probably prefer to spare the life of D. Barbara than be importuned by her in his place ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others

... Palace is situated on the site of the Saracen Al Kasr, and within a short tramway drive of the Hotel de France. It is an unpretentious, castellated building, well worth a visit, not so much for the beauty of its interior decoration, its paintings and frescoes, in which it only resembles other palaces in Italy, but for its interesting history; ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... on himself the especial care of exhorting her, Master Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the scene by saying bitterly to her, "If you don't obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a Saracen." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... this sublime comparison, Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative, And, as my friend Scott says, "I sound my warison;"[752] Scott, the superlative of my comparative— Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen, Serf—Lord—Man, with such skill as none would share it, if There had not been one Shakespeare and Voltaire, Of one or both of whom he seems ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... Guimarus II, who reigned in the ninth century. In the ancient chronicle of Salerno, re-discovered by De Renzi and published in his "Collectio Salernitana," it is definitely recorded that the medical school was founded by four doctors,—a Jewish Rabbi Elinus, a Greek Pontus, a Saracen Adala, an Arab, and a native of Salerno, each of whom lectured in his native language. There are many elements in this tradition, however, that would seem to indicate its mythical origin and that it was probably invented after the event to account for the presence of ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... a Saracen? (Here the word means merely a Mohammedan hostile to the Christians.) What does "rode like corn" mean? (We rode through their ranks as we ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... Phoebus's mysterious companion raised his mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to "make the sun shine in a crown" as saith ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... gravestones, they wander about scantly, trying to look alive—a dead failure." And yet, what ghostly recollections must have come back on him as he walked those streets, or as he passed by into Walcot, the Saracen's Head, where he had put up in those old days, full of brightness, ardour, and enthusiasm; but not yet the famous Boz! Bath folk set down this jaundiced view of their town to a sort of pique at the comparative failure of the ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess stood amazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me an example to my fellows. For a month I endured the pains of hell; then one night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent. On a sudden the darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns ran hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking on the steps of the altar, I ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... account in some measure for the traditions of the existence of large sums of hidden money associated with some of our old family mansions. An amusing story is related by Thomas of Walsingham, which dates as far back as the 14th century. A certain Saracen physician came to Earl Warren to ask permission to kill a dragon which had its den at Bromfield, near Ludlow, and committed great ravages in the earl's lands. The dragon was overcome; but it transpired that a large treasure lay hid in its den. Thereupon some men of Herefordshire went by night ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... the highly valued treasures stored in these rooms," said our friend, the professor, "are trophies of the times when Crusader knight, Persian prince, and Saracen warrior went forth to battle arrayed in costly apparel, and encamped under silken canopies or in tents of cloth of gold. Then jeweled balls suspended from golden cords adorned the tent poles of the warriors, and luxury and opulence abounded underneath the canopies. The royalty of kings and princes ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... on the shores of the Baltic a young novitiate, amid the rigors of a monastic life, was tracing the course of the planets, and solving the problem in which Virgil delighted[47]—problems which had baffled Chaldean and Persian, Egyptian and Saracen. Columbus explained the earth, Copernicus explained the heavens. Neither of the great discoverers lived to see the result of his labors, for the Prussian astronomer died on the day that his work was published. But the centuries ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... sides were glad and proud, and they were not so bitter against us as they had been; they put hand to pouch, and let rear for us a fair pavilion of painted timber, all hung with silk and pictured cloths and Saracen tapestry, by the very lake-side; and gay boats gaily bedight lay off the said pavilion for our pleasure; and when all was done, it yet lacked a half month of the day of battle, and thither were we brought in triumph by the kindreds on a fair day ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... their growth and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method of my own: to me the lily and the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... favourable enough, had he but known how to rest and be thankful: but 'twas not enough that he and his comrades in no long time waxed very wealthy; their covetousness was inordinate, and, while they sought to gratify it, they chanced in an encounter with certain Saracen ships to be taken after a long defence, and despoiled, and, most part of them, thrown into the sea by their captors, who, after sinking his ship, took Martuccio with them to Tunis, and clapped him in prison, and there kept him a long time in ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... how the Ottoman Empire, starting from a grain of mustard-seed in the year 1250 A.D., spread with marvellous energy and rapidity. The Saracen dominions now became Turkish dominions, and the unhappy Greeks had changed masters for the last time. That proud and gifted race was doomed to spend years of servitude ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... years after the great Saracen invasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited by races, the most dissimilar in their origin, religion, and government, the least important ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... century. The other tomb is of similar construction, and is believed to have been brought here from Westbury College; it represents Canynge in his clerical robes, his head supported by angels, and resting his feet on the figure of a Saracen. Here Chatterton frequently ruminated; indeed, the whole church abounds with memorials which call to mind the sources of his inspiration; near the door is an effigy inscribed "Johannes Lamyngton," which gave name to one of his forgeries. He was ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... regard to flag of truce or ambassage. So Sir Morgadour persuaded Ernis to send Sir Guy to the Soudan saying, that, since the war seemed likely to come to no speedy issue, it should be settled by single combat between two champions chosen from the Christian and the Saracen hosts. The counsel seemed good to Ernis, but yet he liked not to risk his son-in-law's life; wherefore he called his Parliament together and asked for some bold knight to go and bear this message. When all the others ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... fell out, that the Abbot had to speak with the Emperor of a wrong which his bailiffs had done to the abbey. The Abbot made him a goodly gift, whereas the abbey and convent were subject unto him, for the Emperor was a Saracen. When the Abbot had given him his goodly gift, the Emperor gave him day for the third day thence, whenas he should be at a castle of his, three leagues from the city ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... Saracens believed that all labor tended to the glory of God; consequently, on their western campaigns they carried rug-manufacture into Sicily, Spain, France, and Italy; and thus it was introduced throughout Europe. It should be here noted that the name Saracen was given by the later Romans and Greeks to certain of the nomadic tribes on the Syrian borders of the Roman Empire. After the introduction of Mohammedanism the name was applied to ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... to his ideas in words which, even in a dead language, have to this day a living power. When Plato was dead, there remained his written words. They remain still. They have entered successively into the philosophies, the creeds, and the practical codes, of the Grecian world, the Roman, the Saracen, and the Christian. At this very hour hundreds of millions of human beings unconsciously hold opinions which the words of that wise old Greek have helped to mould. The mere brute force of a military ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... period of English furniture belongs the celebrated "Great Bed of Ware," of which there is an illustration. This was formerly at the Saracen's Head at Ware, but has been removed to Rye House, about two miles away. Shakespeare's allusion to it in the "Twelfth Night" has identified the approximate date and gives the bed a character. The following ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... "Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield, and on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibuses going eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coachyard of the Saracen's Head Inn; its portals guarded by two Saracens' heads and shoulders frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The Inn itself garnished with another Saracen's head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard. When you walk up this yard you will see the booking-office ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... it for the misguided man that morning that he happened to have purchased a new and strong billycock the day before, else would that mace have sent him—as it had sent many a Saracen of old—to his long home. The blow effectually spoilt the billycock, however, and stretched its owner insensible ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... The Saracen lady accepted the offer, and the next day followed the sultan my father, who found all his retinue upon the skirts of the wood, they having spent the night in searching for him, and being very uneasy because they could not find him. They ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... advantage Homer has over Virgil; the ostensible subject of the Lusiads glows with the truth of experience. But the real subject is behind these splendid voyagings, just as the real subject of Tasso is behind the battles of Christian and Saracen; and in both poets the inmost theme is broadly the same. It is the consciousness of modern Europe. Jerusalem Delivered and the Lusiads are drenched with the spirit of the Renaissance; and that is chiefly ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... the forest discuss their chances, and they were as truly knights as any that ever tilted lance for his lady, or, clothed in mail, fought the Saracen in the Holy Land, and, buried in the vast forest, their dangers were greater, they ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... fancied that it was caused by the approach of the Saracen chieftains, our allies, who had heard that the emperor was besieging Ctesiphon in great force: some again affirmed that the Persians were lying in wait for ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... earnestly for her he raised His voice in council, and affronted death In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck, And brought the captured flag of Genoa back, Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen. He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke, But would have joined the exiles that withdrew For ever, when the Florentine broke in The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts For trophies—but he died before ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... favourite (and fictitious) episode in an "edited" Icelandic saga is for the hero to rescue a lady promised to such a champion (who has bullied her father into consent) by slaying the ruffian. It is the same "motif" as Guy of Warwick and the Saracen lady, and one of the regular ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... new "Holy Roman Empire," and that Charlemagne had been crowned at Rome successor of the Roman Caesars (800 A. D.); nor that an England had just been consolidated into one kingdom. Nor did it concern them that the Saracen had overthrown a Gothic empire in Spain (710). For them these things did not exist. But they knew about Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire was the sun which shone beyond their horizon, and was for them the supreme type of power and ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen's Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open the door. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... drivin' out the infidel, we're hittin' up the Turk, Same ez Richard slung his right across the Saracen invader In old days of which I'm readin'. Now we're gettin' in our work, 'N' what price me nibs, I ask yeh, ez a ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough; though, like the hotels of most old English towns, it had a musty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written 'The Zarr,' and under the other 'The Empress Quean.' They were lolling their tongues out at each other; and over their heads ran a wooden label, inscribed, 'The ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... used in the Homeric action itself; but the trumpet was known, and is introduced for the purpose of illustration as employed in war. Hence arose the value of a loud voice in a commander; Stentor was an indispensable officer... In the early Saracen campaigns frequent mention is made of the service rendered by men of uncommonly strong voices; the battle of Honain was restored by the shouts and menaces of Abbas, the uncle ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... why of course, the scamp! And poor Lucy liking him so much. She wont believe it now, hardly. He looked so splendid taking up that key and swinging his sword about like a Saracen, Lucy says, just to tantalize me, when I know exactly what he is. But I come to ask a great favor, Miss Crawford. You're the only person that I breathed a word to about it. Supposing you just keep quiet, now, especially to James Harrington. It might do mischief there if ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... of The Talisman is in Palestine with Richard Coeur de Lion and his allies of the Third Crusade. From the contest on the desert between the Saracen cavalier and the Knight of the Sleeping Leopard to the final Battle of the Standard it is full of interest. CARNEGIE ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... victuals therein. This kingdome in olde time was very large and vnder the dominion of king Porus, who fought a great battell with Alexander the great. The people of this countrey are idolaters worshipping fire, serpents and trees. And ouer all this land the Saracen do beare rule, who tooke it by maine force, and they themselues are in subjection unto King Daldilus. There be diuers kinds of beasts, as namely blacke lyouns in great abundance, and apes also, and monkeis, and battes as bigge as our doues. Also there are mise as bigge as our countrey dogs, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... of the pointed and flamboyant styles, that is quite another thing. Some writers assert that the pointed arch based on an equilateral triangle existed in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; others regard it as descended from Saracen and Arab ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... the high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands and other heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnesses their monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the god Pen had long been worshiped; the word pen in Celtic meaning ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... once knew, who, called upon to convert a Saracen, said the Creed and told him he was to believe it. The Saracen, as one might have expected, uttered some words of scorn, and the good knight straight-way clove him ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... it appeared, the son of her mother's sister. He was all Spanish. There was not a drop of Arab blood in his veins, unless it came through Saracen ancestors in the days when Moorish kings reigned ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... we find Christian and Saracen making common cause in Palestine against the Kharezmians. These Mongols, who only appeared on the stage of history for a brief period of four years, swept through the country, captured Jerusalem, massacred all on whom they could lay hands, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... loud enough for her to hear. Then turning to Caper, 'Let's andiammo,' (travel,) said he, 'that woman's face will haunt me for a month. I've seen it before; yes, seen her shut up in the Vatican, immortal on an old Etruscan vase. Egypt, Etruria, the Saracen hordes who once overrun all this Southern Italy, I find, every hour, among live people, some trace of you all; but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... this he possessed a castle all jagged at the corners, and shaped and pointed like a Spanish doublet, situated upon a bank from which it was reflected in the Loire. In the rooms were royal tapestries, furniture, Saracen pomps, vanities, and inventions which were much admired by people of Tours, and even by the archbishop and clerks of St. Martin, to whom he sent as a free gift a banner fringed with fine gold. In the neighbourhood of the said castle abounded fair domains, wind-mills, and forests, yielding a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... chanted in the Romance speech, have all perished. From a later time there have come down to us the Chansons de Geste, narrative poems composed by the professional caste of poets to celebrate the deeds and adventures of the knights who fought the battles of Charlemagne against the Saracen invader. ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... he never speaks in haste. At last he rose. Proudly he looked and spake Unto the messengers:—"Ye have well said That King Marsile e'er stood my greatest foe! On these fair-seeming words how far can I Rely?" The crafty Saracen replied: "Would you have hostages? you shall have ten, Fifteen, yea, twenty. Though his fate be death My son shall go, and others nobler still, I deem. When to your lordly palace, home Returned—when comes Saint Michael ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... In the Persian theology Orozmades and Ahriman are the good and bad angels. In Scott's "Talisman" the disguised Saracen (Saladin) invokes Ahriman as "the dark spirit." In one of his earlier letters Walpole describes his ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... This fact, which has not been sufficiently noticed, shows conclusively that the energy imparted by Mohammedanism to Oriental nations would have lasted but a short time, and encountered in the West a successful resistance, had not the Turks appeared on the scene, destroyed the Saracen dynasties, and, by infusing the blood of Central Asia into the veins of Eastern and Southern fanatics, prolonged for so many ages the sway of the Crescent over a large portion of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Mary added the grace of courtesy to its heroism. Evidently Roland had grown in importance before the "Chanson de Roland" took its present form, for we find the rearguard skirmish magnified into a great battle, which manifestly contains recollections of later Saracen invasions and Gascon revolts. As befits the hero of an epic, Roland is now of royal blood, the nephew of the great emperor, who has himself increased in age and splendour; this heroic Roland can obviously only be overcome by the treachery of one of the Franks themselves, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... transubstantiation, with questioning the value of the confessional, and the power of the keys; and the absence of authoritative Protestant dogma had left his mind free to expand to a yet larger belief. He had ventured to assert, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen do trust in God and keep his law, he is a good Christian man,"[550]—a conception of Christianity, a conception of Protestantism, which we but feebly dare to whisper even at the present day. The proceedings against him commenced with a demand ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... The "Saracen's Head" at Snow Hill,—a real thing in Dickens' day,—where the impetuous Squeers put up during his visits to London, has disappeared. It was pulled down when the Holborn Viaduct was built in 1869, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... devoted country, with but few substantial checks. Masters of all the islands in the Mediterranean, their corsairs insulted the coasts of Italy, and even threatened the destruction of the Eastern empire. While Alexis was occupied in a war with Patzinaces, on the banks of the Danube, Zachas, a Saracen pirate, scoured the Archipelago, having, with the assistance of an able Smyrniote, constructed a flotilla of forty brigantines, and some light fast-rowing boats, manned by adventurers like himself. After taking several of the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... of 16, who suffered under the Diocletian persecution about 304, and is variously represented in mediaeval legend as bearing a stone and sword, or a palm branch, and trampling a Saracen under foot, in allusion to his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the Saracen, likewise, have had their day of power and renown. Bagdad was the seat of science and learning at a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in darkness and superstition. The Turk and Saracen should have pointed to the Koran as the ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... When plumes were high and prudence low, And every knight felt bound to "go The pace," and just like Richard do, By running his purse and a Paynim through. Yet do not suppose that Vidomar Was ever a knight in the Holy War: For Richard many a Saracen's head Had lopped before the old Count was dead; And Richard was home from Palestine, Home from the dungeon of Tiernstein, And many a Christian corpse had made, Ere the time in which the story is laid. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... three palms arose near a well, and there two horsemen faced each other warily. One was a Christian knight in a coat of linked mail, over which he wore a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and bearing more than once the arms of the wearer—a couchant leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was circling swiftly about the knight of the leopard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a strong hand and unerring aim sent it crashing against the head of his foe, who raised his buckler of rhinoceros-hide in time to save his life, though ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... breeds hate. After Alsace the German should have known too much to try the same method in harsher forms upon Belgium and invaded France. But the barbarian learns no spiritual lessons. Persian atrocity, Saracen atrocity, Indian atrocity, Spanish atrocity—they have all failed. An enduring triumph was never won on that principle ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... a home for literature was found in the eastern cities; and, as the boundaries of the empire were broken down by the Saracen advance, learning gradually retired to the colleges and basilicas of the capital, and to the Greek monasteries of stony Athos, and Patmos, and the 'green Erebinthus.' Among the Romans of the East we cannot discern many learned men, but we know that there was a multitude ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... better 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains, That earthly sorrows ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... rebellions of the Egyptians they always quoted against the Greeks this council of Constantinople, with that of Nicasa, as the foundation of their faith. By this religious policy, Theodosius did much to delay the fall of the empire. He won the friendship of his Egyptian subjects, as well as of their Saracen neighbours, all of whom, as far as they were Christian, held to the Nicene creed. Egypt became the safest of his provinces; and, when his armies had been recruited with so many barbarians that they could no longer be trusted, these new ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... snipes, wild swans, ducks, robins, and owls and oionoisi te pasi for dinner; and with three pauls' worth of wines and victuals the hungriest has enough, even Claypole the sculptor. Did you ever know him? He used to come to the Haunt. He looks like the Saracen's head with his beard now. There is a French table still more hairy than ours, a German table, an American table. After dinner we go and have coffee and mezzo-caldo at the Cafe Greco over the way. Mezzo-caldo ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 1187, Jerusalem was taken by Saladin, the most heroic and distinguished of all the Saracen rulers. The loss of the Holy City led to the most famous of all the military expeditions to the Holy Land, in which Frederick Barbarossa, Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, and his political rival, Philip Augustus of France, all took part. The accounts of the enterprise show that while the several ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... and dramatic expansions, and their taste for breadth and variety. Somewhat warm with these notions, we came to a meeting with our poet, and the first thought, on seeing him, was, "The head of a Hebrew prophet!" It is not Hebrew,—Saracen rather; the Jewish type is heavier, more material; but it corresponded strikingly to the conceptions we had formed of the Southern Semitic crania, and the whole make of the man was of the same character. The high cranium, so lofty especially in the dome,—the slight and symmetrical backward slope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... And now the Saracen King Marsilas began to gather his army. He laid a strict command on all his nobles and chiefs that they should bring with them to Saragossa as many men as they could gather together. And when they were come to the city, it being the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... was so great that he not only became from an insignificant man Sultan of Babylon, but also gained many victories over the Saracen and Christian kings, having in many wars and in his great magnificence spent all his treasure, and on account of some trouble having need of a great quantity of money, nor seeing where he should get it quickly as he had need ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... attended the proctor, with such a staring addition to the natural ghastliness of his features, that his visage bore a very apt resemblance to some of those ferocious countenances that hang over the doors of certain taverns and ale-houses, under the denomination of the Saracen's head. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... often content itself with occasional praise. Tamerlane has for a long time been acted only once a year, on the night when king William landed. Our quarrel with Lewis has been long over; and it now gratifies neither zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated features, like a Saracen upon a sign. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the terrible chain which long- dead Rome once forged, still gave the power of cheating people into thinking that they were necessary lords of the world. Turn then to the lands they governed, and read and forget a long string of the causeless murders of Northern and Saracen pirates and robbers. That is pretty much the sum of what so-called history has left us of the tale of those days—the stupid languor and the evil deeds of kings and scoundrels. Must we turn away then, and say that all was evil? How then did men live from day to day? How then ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... not?—Try me," answered the Flemish maiden, in return. "I am neither Saracen nor Welshman—his lance and sword scare me not. I follow not his banner—his voice of command concerns me not. I could, with your leave, boldly tell him he is a selfish man, veiling with fair and honourable pretexts his pursuit of objects ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... and often helped to make useful and polished instruments out of very unpromising material. Nearly a thousand years ago Peter the Hermit passed like a flame of fire across the provinces of Europe calling upon men to wrest the Holy places from the hands of the Saracen. In countless thousands they responded to his call, even little children arising and pressing eastward on the great emprise. Surely there is need enough for crusading to-day. Surely, too, there are multitudes who, for their own souls' sake, and for the sake of the Church, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... Christian outpost of Europe. For hundred of year the Byzantine Empire stood as a barrier against the Saracen hosts of Asia. It might have stood still longer, but sad to say, this barrier was first broken down by the Christians themselves. For in 1204 the armies of the fourth Crusade, which had gathered to fight the heathen, turned their swords, to their shame ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... day-spring, regenerate Greek! Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek: In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak, When their love and their lutes they reclaim; And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak Shall be ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... shape, and hue, and foliage—all the growth of thirty years, and the greater part of them planted by the hands of Colonel Warrington himself. The villa is on the site of an ancient haunted house—for what country does not boast of its haunted house? The spot which once was visited nightly by some Saracen's-head ghost, in the midst of a waste, is now the fairest, loveliest garden of Tripoli! Amongst its rich fruit-trees is an immense peach-tree—the largest in all this part of Africa. It is a round, squatting, wide-spreading ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... to their Syrian faith, were full of barbaric zeal against those whom they looked upon as the enemies of Jesus. But the Spanish Jews sought assistance from their kinsmen the Saracens on the opposite coast; Spain was invaded and subdued by the Moors, and for several centuries the Jew and the Saracen lived under the same benignant laws and shared the same brilliant prosperity. In the history of Spain during the Saracenic supremacy any distinction of religion or race is no longer traced. And so it came to pass ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... sat writing at a large table before one window. Her paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach of ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... after her].—It's all true. Gospel-true. We were children in the same village—sat on the same form at school. And it was for her sake that Bob Brown the butcher's boy whopped me. A black eye! I'm not handsome. But if I were ugly, ugly as the Saracen's 'Ead, ugly as that beast Bulkeley, I know it would be all the same to Mary. SHE has never forgot the boy she loved, that brought birds'-nests for her, and spent his halfpenny on cherries, and bought a fairing with ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray

... write in cheerful hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot. My martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid'). We might have stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the Saracen's Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging signs the names: Ty Ucha and Ty Isaf, both of which would ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and brought it away. It strikes me as one of the most ludicrous things I ever saw in my life. I think of taking a public-house, and having it copied larger, for the size. You may remember it? Very square and big—the Saracen's Head with its hair cut, and in modern gear? Staring very hard? As your particular friend, I would not part with it on any consideration. I will never get such a wooden ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... figure of the Red Knight with his Witch Mother; the three drops of blood upon the snow, and the ensuing love trance; pure Folk-tale themes, mingled with the more chivalric elements of the rescue of a distressed maiden, and the vanquishing in single combat of doughty antagonists, Giant, or Saracen. One and all of them elements offering widespread popular parallels, and inviting the unwary critic into paths which lead him far astray from the goal of his quest, the Grail Castle. I dispute in no way the possible presence ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... to speak of the faith of Islam.] has often been called the religion of the sword, and Mahomet and his Arabic successors, under the first impulse, conquered Syria, Persia, Northern Africa, and Spain, and met their first check at Tours from Charles Martel. These, the Saracen Arabs, were a generous race, no persecutors, and almost friendly to the Christians, contenting themselves with placing them under restrictions, and exacting from them a small tribute. After the first great ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... entered, and summoned him to his fearful audit; and his servants, aroused by his screams, found only a lifeless corpse. This was considered retribution for his sins of the past, and his son, taking warning, girded on his sword, and in Palestine did doughty deeds against the Saracen. By his side was constantly seen the mysterious Black Monk—his friend and guide—but "at length the wine-cup and the smiles of lewd women lured him from the path of right." After a time the knight returned to Devonshire, "and lo, on ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... rushed to arms, and not a moment too soon. Marsilius, Saracen King of Spain, was preparing to cross ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... and young girls of the better class may, without causing much comment, go upon the street unattended. In the south, however, the position of women is very different, and they are still regarded in much the same way as are the women of Oriental countries. The long years of Saracen rule are responsible for this condition, which makes the woman little more than the slave of her husband. It is said that in some country districts it is the custom for the husband to lock his wife in the house whenever he goes from home, and the usage is so well established that if the ceremony ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... where Ragnvald lands, and refuses to marry Queen Ermengarde. Afterwards he rounds Galicia, where Eindridi's treachery robs them of spoil in taking Godfrey's castle, beats through Niorfa Sound (the Straits of Gibraltar); is deserted by Eindridi, sails along Sarkland (Barbary), captures the Saracen ship Dromund, and burns her, sells the prisoners in Barbary, but releases their prince, coasts along Crete, lands at Acre, and bathes in Jordan on St. Lawrence's Day, the 10th of August 1152. After a visit to Jerusalem they come at last to Constantinople, where the Varangian ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... that trade into his country for merchandise, and a place of liberty for them to remain in; as the Moors had, until such time as they had brought the Loutea or Lieutenant of that coast to be a circumcised Saracen: wherefore some of them were put to the sword, the rest were scattered abroad; at Fuquien, a great city in China, certain of them are yet this day to be seen. As for the Japanese, they be most desirous to be acquainted with strangers. ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... been warned of the "change-over" in "Saracen" and "Christian"—a slip of the pen which I am afraid I have been guilty of before now, though I have known the story for full forty years. But Floire, though a "paynim," was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... established that church by his doctrines and miracles, and there his body was entombed. If, therefore, any difficulty should occur that cannot elsewhere be resolved, let it be brought before these Sees, and it shall, by divine grace, be decided. As Gallicia was freed in these early ages from the Saracen yoke, by the favour of God and St. James, and by the King's valour, so may it continue firm in the orthodox faith till ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... without altering his position for nearly three hours, at the end of which time steps were heard on the dungeon stair. The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn, the hinges creaked as the wicket opened, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, followed by two Saracen slaves of the Templar, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... Coeur de Lion made all England resound with preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he appropriated immediately to his ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... early ages of the caliphate, Syria and Egypt were inhabited by a numerous Christian population of the Nestorian and Jacobite heresies, firmly attached to the Saracen power, on their hatred to the orthodox Roman emperors at Constantinople. The importance of the canal of Suez to the well-being of these useful subjects of the Arab empire, could not escape the attention of the caliphs. The native population of Egypt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... just becoming too much tired to care to look any longer out of the window, when the coach rumbled over the pebbly street into the courtyard of the 'Saracen's Head.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... in which the spirit of his great father survives, in a state of almost effeminate degeneration. In despair of ever restoring the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen, he seeks to forget his sadness in romance and song. There now appears upon the scene a young Saracen lady, just arrived from the East, who, by appealing to the alliance between East and West concluded by Manfred's noble father, conjures the desponding son to maintain his imperial heritage. She acts the part of an inspired prophetess, and though the prince is quickly filled with love for her, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... an office of great ease. But, said Orlando, "Saracen insane! I come to kill you, if it shall so please God, not to serve as footboy in your train; You with his monks so oft have broke the peace— Vile dog! 'tis past his patience to sustain." The Giant ran to fetch his arms, quite ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... route seems to be doubtful. He takes up his narrative at Tauris, which he describes as a large flourishing town built in the midst of beautiful gardens and carrying on a great traffic in precious stones and other valuable merchandise, but its Saracen inhabitants are disloyal and treacherous. Here he seems to divide Persia geographically into eight provinces. The natives of Persia, according to him, are formidable enemies to the merchants, who are obliged to travel armed with bows and arrows. The principal trade of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow piazza ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow him. She knew but two words of the English language—London and Gilbert; but ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... hour that Joseph came to Sarras there was a King that hight Evelake, that had great war against the Saracens, and in especial against one Saracen, the which was King Evelake's cousin, a rich king and a mighty, which marched nigh this land. So on a day these two met to do battle. Then Joseph, the son of Joseph of Arimathie, went to King Evelake ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... faithful, to whom he joined himself, and was in a short time elected their minister, in which occupation he strengthened them in every good resolution. Dec. 12th, through the information of one Taylor, a member of the society, Mr. Rough, with Cuthbert Symson and others, was taken up in the Saracen's Head, Islington, where, under the pretext of coming to see a play, their religious exercises were holden. The queen's vice-chamberlain conducted Rough and Symson before the council, in whose presence they were charged with meeting to celebrate the communion. The council wrote ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... surprising condition of the Crusader who absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... Bevis of Hamtoun, (Earl of Southampton,) he is represented as a kind of infant Hercules, who, when fifteen, killed sixty Saracen knights. He afterwards was imprisoned at Damascus in a den with two dragons, but destroyed them. He was kept ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... stalectite that had been formed, and was still increasing, by the constant oozing of water holding in solution calcareous matter, and suspended from a projection of the upper part of the rock. But the light was sufficient to discover a gigantic image with a Saracen face, who "grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile." On his head was a sort of crown; in one hand he held a naked scymeter, and a firebrand in the other; but the history of this colossal divinity seemed to be imperfectly known, even ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... destroy the Church and Christianity itself. In the plains between Tours and Poitiers, the Saracens were met by the Austrasian Franks under Charles Martel (732). The impetuous charges of the Saracen cavalry were met and beaten back by the infantry of the Franks, which confronted them like an iron wall. The Mohammedan defeat saved Christian Europe from being trampled under foot by the Mussulman; it saved the Christian people of the Aryan nations from being ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... of Breidenbach of Mentz, and of Martin Baumgarten, who in the beginning of the sixteenth century achieved a journey into the Holy Land. The latter of these, while passing through Egypt, was most barbarously treated by the Saracen boys, who pelted him with dirt, brickbats, stones, and rotten fruit. At Hebron he was shown the field "were it is said, or at least guessed, that Adam was made;" but the reddish earth of which it is composed is now used in the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... sunset. Whilst passing La Tricherie I halted for a moment to show mademoiselle the ruins of Baudimont, and pointed out to her, in the distance on our right, the field of Moussaisla-Bataille, where Charles the Hammer broke the Saracen advance for ever. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... 'I tell you that his is truly a holy war against oppression and wrong-doing. Look at your own poor peasants, Meg, and say if he, and those like him, are not doing their best to save this country from a tyranny as foul as ever was the Saracen grasp on the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Late Greek romance. Its difficulties as a subject. Anna Comnena, &c. Hysminias and Hysmine. Its style. Its story. Its handling. Its "decadence." Lateness of Italian. The "Saracen" theory. The "folk-song" theory. Ciullo d'Alcamo. Heavy debt to France. Yet form and spirit both original. Love-lyric in different European countries. Position of Spanish. Catalan-Provencal. Galician-Portuguese. Castilian. Ballads? The Poema del Cid. A Spanish chanson de geste. In scheme ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... this torment was limited to five prophetic months. In one hundred and fifty years from the Hegira the Saracen empire had ceased to be aggressive. In 762 Bagdad, the city of peace, was founded on the Tigris, by Al-Mansur, who died in 774. "From this time," says ROTTICK, "the Arabian history assumes an entirely different character." It was no longer progressive; the proud Saracen empire became dismembered, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... the bravest youth Of all our good king's men, And he was gone to the Holy Land To fight the Saracen. ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... he had convoked at Paderborn, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the king. He had arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the king of the Franks himself and all the towns which the king of the Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a great apartment in "The Saracen's Head," at the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from Dunoon and landed in a small boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. My father with ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... They are all hard by Marseilles. But Avignon ever most caught my fancy, for there the nights seem peopled with the ghosts of warriors and cardinals, and there on festal mornings the spirits of Petrarch and his Laura walk abroad, the ramparts, which bade defiance to Goth and Vandal and Saracen hordes, now giving shelter to bats and owls, but ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... much greater. The book of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268, contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris, among which we find 'the tapiciers, or makers of the tapis sarrasinois (or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only of churches, or great men like kings and counts'; and, indeed, even in our own day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures and decorative methods point to an Oriental ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde



Words linked to "Saracen" :   history, nomad, Arab, Arabian, Moslem, Muslim



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