In Chapter XXXVII of the first part of Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote, the reader is introduced to Lela Zoreida, an Algerian noblewoman who has fled her homeland and seeks to be baptized. A poignant exchange ensues Zoreida's introduction, one in which she insists that she be called “Maria” rather than “Zoreida.” Her clothes mark her as a Moor and she possesses no Spanish; yet, she asks to be treated as a Christian rather than a Muslim. At first, this request seems likely to be granted: one of the other guests at the inn, Luscinda, comforts the agitated Zoreida with assurances that she will be called Maria. Over the next several chapters, however, it become increasingly clear that, despite all of the sacrifices she has made to become a Christian, Zoreida remains a Moor to those around her. Zoreida's difference cannot be erased by her intent to convert or even, it is suggested, by baptism. Zoreida's name, her clothing, and her language root her firmly in her Algerian, Muslim past and make it seemingly impossible to adopt the faith and identity she claims has been hers since she was a young child. Although Zoreida has given up wealth, family, and home to receive baptism, her intentions matter very little to other Christians and how they perceive her.

Don Quixote is an early modern, Spanish product, a work written after the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and one hardly revealing of late medieval English attitudes towards the Muslim Other. Yet, Geraldine Heng has compellingly argued that the roots of racialization emerge in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England. I would add that several thirteenth- and fourteenth-century narratives reveal a heightened anxiety about difference, questioning the power of baptism and conversion while simultaneously emphasizing other markers of difference such as clothing and language. Josian of Bevis of Hampton and Thomas Becket's non-Christian mother of the Becket legend pave the way, I would argue, for the much later Lela Zoreida.

Fourteenth-century English literary works document an increasing concern regarding conversion. The King of Tars, for example, reveals a deep-seated fear for the spiritual welfare of Christians thrust into pagan cultures and societies. Through the nameless princess of Tars, we witness a Christian believer who comes to act and pass as a Saracen, even going so far as to swear fealty to Saracen idols publicly.