That’s funny, because the story of the historical figure it is based on was originally told to him by a jewish professor of Turkic studies, and was intended to demonize a ruler of the Christian world for not letting Muslims invade his country. They say anti-semetic but it’s clear it was meant to slander a pro-christian figure.

Basically the professor attempted to describe a being of pure evil, and Bram though, I’ll write a story about that kind of character. So Bram writes a story about the caricature of evil itself, and jews say, “Hey, that guy sounds a lot like us, clearly it’s meant as a metaphore.”