SARACENS was the current designation among the Christians of Europe in the Middle Ages for their Moslem enemies, especially for the Moslems in Europe. In earlier times the name of Saraceni was applied by Greeks and Romans to the troublesome nomad Arabs of the Syro-Arabian desert who continually harassed the frontier of the empire from Egypt to the Euphrates. It is easy to understand how, after Islam, the name came to be extended to the Moslem enemies of the empire in general, but no satisfactory explanation has been given of the reason why the Romans called the frontier tribes Saracens. It is most natural to suppose that they adopted some name of a tribe or confederation and used it in an extended sense, just as the Syrians called all these northern nomads by the name of the tribe of Tayyi’. The common derivation from the Arabic sharkî, “ eastern,” is quite untenable. Springer suggests that the word may be simply shoraká, “allies.”