It was a September much like this one nearly 800 years ago, during which a most curious meeting took place between two illustrious figures in world history: Francis de Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, and Al-Malik Al-Kamel Naser Al-Din, the Ayubbid Sultan of Egypt and Saladin’s nephew.
Still, the echoes of this chance 1219 encounter in Damietta linger with us today. Since then, centuries of interpretations and re-readings have been grafted onto this meeting. Medievalist writer John Tolan tries to dissect the views of the meeting between the two men in his new book “Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter.
Tolan examines writings from the medieval era and up until the present. The Sultan’s meeting with St. Francis, whom the author deems to be the most popular of all Catholic saints, has been extensively scrutinized by diverse intellectuals, from Voltaire to the current Catholic Pope, Benedict XVI.
During the Fifth Crusade (also known as Frisian Crusade), the Christian armies were camped in the Nile delta near Damietta where they plotted to take control of the city. While for the more religious crusaders Damietta was surely no substitute for Jerusalem; for some merchant-minded Italians in the army, it was a far richer prize due to trade possibilities.
Sometime during the siege, St. Francis daringly crossed the lines to seek out the Sultan. Few details about the meeting have been documented. What is known is that St. Francis went to the Sultan under the pretext of a religious dialogue as the Sultan was a patron of such discourses. After a few days, St. Francis was given a free pass to return to the Crusader lines.
Even these “probable facts, as John Tolan calls them, have become distorted by later writers. Some medieval historians placed the meeting not in the Nile Delta but vaguely in “Syria while Al-Kamel Naser Al-Din became the “King of the Persians.
Modern writers have made similar errors. One 20th century writer, Peggy Schultz, claimed that the meeting was “believed to be the first between a Westerner and a Muslim leader. This is a fantastic statement that blatantly ignores the events of the previous four crusades as well as numerous other historical encounters. None of these writers, including Tolan, have managed to recognize that as a member of the Ayyuib dynasty, Sultan Al-Kamil was actually of Kurdish descent.
Pre-modern commentators were actually critical of St. Francis’ mission, deeming it, along with the Fifth crusade, as a general failure. Some medieval commentators believed the mission served as proof that dialogue was impossible with the Arabs and Muslims because if even St. Francis had failed in his efforts, then all others efforts, bar violence, were futile.
Since 1945, St. Francis de Assisi’s has been increasingly viewed as a peacemaker. Louis Massignon and Jacques Dupuis saw in St. Francis a spirit of interfaith religious dialogue. At the same time, Massignon’s writing paved the way in many ways for the Catholic Church’s conciliation with Islam in the Second Vatican Council.
In 1996, Albert Jacquard used the Damietta dialogue to call for the creation of a “Mediterranean Cultural Union to promote cultural ties as the forerunner to increased political and economic integration. While these ideas may have seemed overly ambitious when they were first written; today, Egypt, along with France, has served as co-president of the recently minted Union for the Mediterranean. Of course the headquarters of this organization was chosen as Barcelona, Spain not Damietta as Jacquard preferred.
Some contemporary figures have not been willing to declare that Saint Francis’s goal was conflict resolution. As recently as 2005, a Catholic official stated that “St. Francis participated in the fifth crusade as a chaplain to the troops and not as a man of peace. On the other hand, the current Pope, though known for a mixed record with interfaith dialogue according to Toland and seeking to rein the excesses of the Franciscan order, has embraced St. Francis as a figure of peace.
At times, Tolan feels ambivalent in his portrayal of St. Francis in Egypt. “I may seem pedantic when I stress the fragility of the historical basis for this image of an ecumenical saint hostile to the crusading movement. But the authors of the 20th and 21st centuries do nothing more or less than their predecessors: create a saint that fits their ideological needs.
The author himself strives not to see the encounter as aberration of footnote but within the context of history. Tolan is sympathetic to the New Age approach that regards St. Francis as figure of inter-religious dialogue. At one point, he describes St. Francis (the patron saint of animals, the environment and Italy) as an “Italian ascetic, a sort of Christian Sufi. In writing his historiographical book, Toland has used both original documents and devotional paintings to demonstrate how representations and discussions of the dialogue between the two men have shifted overtime.
“Saint Francis and the Sultan is important and very timely for those interested in issues of interreligious dialogues, the crusades, and the Franciscans view of the Middle East. Tolan’s book, however, does not examine much historical evidence from the Egyptian side of the equation. Contextualizing further this side of the equation would’ve added extra depth and richness to the book. John Tolan writes that few sources for telling the other side exist. Then again, the title of the book is “St. Francis and Sultan and not “and Al-Malik Al-Kamel Naser Al-Din and the Saint.
