"Embodying an alien, racialized physicality, these Saracens are typically described only in terms of their skin color ("soom bloo, some yolowe, some blake as More" [1005]). 64 Unintelligible in their customs, language, and vice, they worship senseless idols, torture prisoners, ride strange beasts, murder innocents." -Cohen
Cohen explains the importance of the body in creating a threatening and other-ized presence that is both characterized by skin color and used as a tool to bring chaos.
While the body is critical to the understanding of race in the Sultan of Babylon articulated in Cohen, so too are the cultural differences and linguistic dissimilarities that mark the Saracens as other in more than just body. #