Turks, Tartars, even Persians constituted the infidel powers which neighboured and threatened European Christiandom. The word "Turk" was mainly used in two ways, as a generic name for an Islamic State with its own characteristic institutions of Government and military; and as a description of behaviour or character -- the Turks being of nature cruel and heartless... The idea of cruelty was probably produced by the Turks' distant foreignness combined with an absence from their lives of comprehensible Christian ethics, but more importantly by their military threat.
