Matter of the Greenwood: The Saracen outlaw
Since the 1980s, most major new Robin Hood stories have included a Muslim Merry Man – but how much further back does the character go? N.B. this post has been updated to take into account recent additions to the mythos. Content note: racism; Islamophobia. In many modern retellings of the Robin Hood legend, the outlaw hero (very often a veteran of the Third Crusade) has either brought back with him, or somehow encountered and recruited in England, a Muslim associate. Indeed, t