…the Arabians themselves named Sarracens (for Sarra signifieth a desert in the Arabique tongue) or else, if not of their place, yet at least, as learned men certainely thinke, of their property, they might obtain that name of Sarracens, namely, because they lived much by rapine (for that the word Saracke in Arabique doth import) to which above all nations they ever were and still are addicted, for by deduction of the name Sarracens, from Sara, as if they claimed descent from her, being indeede Hagarens (the progeny of Hagar) is a meere fancy and fable. They claime it not.
-Hakluytus Posthumus, 1625, Samuel Purchas, Footnote to his disquisition on Semitic circumcision ritual
This etymology of the word Sarracen (in a 17th C misspelling that makes a possible cognate of the also misspelled word Sarra, Sahara, or alternatively, as descendants of Abraham’s lawful wife Sara, not as generally thought through his concubine-slave Hagar) contradicts its more commonly accepted origin from the Arabic word Sharqi, Eastern, and not as Purchas gives, from Saraqa, to Steal, nor from Saraha, to Roam. And what might the drovers say about such tortured wordplay? The opposite, no doubt, of how they urged Bilal to recite poetry each night at the campfire. Iftah al-Bāb! Open the Door!