The Sultan and The Saint - Is It Too Late for Peace?
St. Francis of Assisi Dares Death to Meet the Sultan Amidst Bloody War - A Lesson for This Moment
(An excerpt from Templar Return - A Memoir of Hidden Gold, The Rising Goddess, and The Restoration of Chivalry, by Michael Henry Dunn)
In the late summer of the year 1219 AD, Saint Francis of Assisi stood before Sultan Malik Al-Kamil, ruler of Egypt, amid the bloody cruelty of the Fifth Crusade. Francis and his traveling companion, Friar Illuminato, had walked across the sweltering no-man’s land between the Saracen army and the Crusader camp, risking torture and death, so that Francis could fulfill his long-held desire to peacefully speak of God with the Muslim leader, hoping to convert him to Christ and thus end the horrible bloodshed. The two ragged monks had been roughly seized by Saracen soldiers when they approached the camp, and would likely have been immediately executed as spies, but they cried out repeatedly, “Sultan! Sultan!”
Thinking they might bear a peace offer from the Crusader camp, the soldiers brought the odd pair before the Sultan.
At this point in his remarkable life, Francis was already known all over Europe as a living saint. Few would argue that he stands today, in fact, as the greatest Christian saint since the time of the Apostles. His statue adorns thousands of gardens the world over, a dove alight on his shoulder, or a tame wolf at his feet – the revered “Little Poor One” who preached simplicity and peace, worker of miracles, and beloved of animals.
What is less well-known is that Francis’ pacifism was not merely a pious pose, or a desire to spread the peace of the soul (though it was surely that). He had been a soldier himself, had been imprisoned for a year, had seen men butchered like cattle, and witnessed the savage cruelty, lust, and greed which war unleashed in the human heart. He was not merely “peaceful” in his winning personality and intense devotion. He was – as much as he could be in a Catholic world in which opposition to a Crusade was viewed as a mortal sin – truly opposed to war itself: an almost unthinkable notion for his time. When he experienced the conversion which would lead him to abandon the world and endure persecution and ridicule for his choice of a life of radical poverty, he taught his disciples the simple greeting which expressed the heart of his ministry.
“May the Lord give you peace.”
As he stood before Sultan Al-Kamil – a subtle and learned man who had Sufi mystics as close advisors and who hoped to actually give Jerusalem back to the Crusaders in exchange for peace – this was the greeting he gave, when the Sultan asked him what brought him to his tent.
“May the Lord give you peace.”
Somewhat perplexed by this unusual greeting, given amid a bloody war, the Sultan may have anticipated an offer of a truce.
“Are you an ambassador from the Pope’s army?” inquired Al-Malik.
“We are ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ,” replied Francis.
The Sultan likely discerned the subtle implications of Francis’ answer, with the hint that the actions of the Pope and the Crusaders were not necessarily in line with the teachings of “the Lord Jesus Christ.”
There followed one of the most remarkable – and under-reported – conversations ever to unfold between the Muslim and Christian worlds. For three days, the Sultan hosted Francis in his tent, in the middle of a savage war between their faiths – nearly on the battlefield itself – as the two men spoke of God and the different (and sometimes quite similar) ways in which they worshipped the Divine. Evidence indicates that both men were profoundly affected by their encounter. Francis ever afterward would counsel his monks to live peacefully among Muslims – not seeking martyrdom through outspoken public challenges of Muslim religious tenets, but living humbly and peacefully, teaching the ways of Christ by example. Inspired by witnessing the Muslim practice of salat - the five-times-per-day prayers of the Muslims – and particularly noting that this practice is not by monks only but is enjoined upon all the faithful, clerics and lay people alike – Francis apparently instituted a Christian practice which survives to this day, the ringing of the Angelus bells to call the faithful to prayer, wherever they might be and whatever activity they might be engaged in (we may call this a well-substantiated historical conjecture, given that the first documented practice of the Angelus bells and prayer was in the early Franciscan monasteries soon after the saint’s passing).
The Angelus Bells, painting by Jean-Francois Millet
For his part, the Sultan offered magnificent gifts of gold and precious garments to Francis and Illuminato on their departure – which, of course, in keeping with their vows of poverty, they courteously declined. A more extraordinary gift bestowed by the Sultan was the decree that the Franciscan Order could establish and maintain a presence in Jerusalem itself, regardless of what state of war or peace might exist between the Arab world and Christian Europe.
While Francis did not achieve his goal of converting the Sultan to Christ, nor of stopping the horrible war, he did leave us an inspiring example of the understanding and peace that can prevail between these two great faiths, based on their authentic shared devotion to Spirit.
A remarkable book by Paul Moses called “The Sultan and The Saint” undertook an investigative reporter’s approach to this episode, and went back to primary sources of eyewitnesses, or of those most immediate to the event in time. Later versions of Francis’ life would distort and embellish the story, including a wholly invented incident in which Francis offered to walk over a bed of coals along with a Muslim cleric to see whose God was greater. Such an act would have been out of keeping with Francis’ humility, and was, moreover, a kind of “trial by ordeal” which had just been specifically forbidden by the Pope. The authors of these versions of Francis’ life, observes Paul Moses, would likely not have wanted to dwell on the overt pacificism displayed by Francis in an age when Popes still preached Crusades as holy wars.
The Templar presence at the Battle of Damietta is well documented. What is less well known in Western accounts is the way in which the Muslim soldiers, under Sultan Al-Malik’s specific instructions, showed mercy and compassion to their defeated Christian enemies, even after those same enemies had raped and pillaged and burned several Egyptian cities. The entire Fifth Crusade – as Francis warned – was unholy and avaricious, in that the Crusader armies had as their goal, not the “liberation” of Jerusalem, but the conquering of Egypt and the domination of trade routes from Damietta – which was, indeed, the specific intent of many of the Italian merchants who helped supply the war effort. This was no “holy war” but a war for profit, pure and simple, with Christ used as an excuse. The Vatican repressed information of a peace offer from the Sultan in which he offered to return Jerusalem itself to Christian control, in exchange for a promise not to invade Egypt. The offer was ignored.
As St. Francis had sadly prophesied, the Fifth Crusade ended in disgrace and defeat for the Christian forces. Damietta was freed from siege by the Sultan’s army – but not before many thousands of his people has perished from starvation and Christian swords. In this moment of triumph, when the Crusaders might well have expected merciless vengeance from the victorious Saracens, they were instead shown an example of Arab chivalry at its noblest. For the Crusaders were not slaughtered (as the people of Jerusalem were – Muslim and Christian alike – when the Crusaders conquered the city in 1099 A.D.) but were treated with mercy and even kindness.
Paul Moses’ investigative reporting brought forward a remarkable eyewitness account in a pro-Crusades account by Oliver of Paderborn, who likened Sultan Al-Kamil to a gracious father “who saved the trapped Crusaders, visited them in their misery, heard their complaints, cared for their sick, and excelled all other noblemen with his wisdom.”
Oliver of Paderborn’s account:
The Sultan was moved by such compassion toward us that for many days he freely revived and refreshed our whole multitude….Who could doubt that such kindness, mildness and mercy proceeded from God? Those whose parents, sons, and daughters, brothers and sisters we killed with various tortures, whose property we scattered or whom we cast naked from their dwellings, refreshed us with their own food as we were dying of hunger, although we were in their dominion and power. And so with great sorrow and mourning we left the port of Damietta, and according to our different nations, we separated to our everlasting disgrace.
The history of warfare is replete with tales of both merciless savagery and noble examples of compassion and honor. It is worth remembering at this time when Christian and Muslim are being pitted against each other, that we in the West owe much of our heritage of the Code of Chivalry to the noble codes of Arab culture. Indeed, one of the accusations against the Templars in the persecution of 1307 was that they were too closely allied with their Saracen opponents and had been too influenced by Islam.
The modern Templar stream may well come into conflict with conservative Islam in our unabashed championing of human rights, and especially regarding the empowerment of women, and reverence for the Divine Feminine. But our ardent intention and primary goal is the reconciliation of people of all faiths in the spirit of the high values of the Codes of Honor we all share: compassion for the hungry, for the oppressed, and respect for the sovereignty of the soul, and of the inherent right of sovereign nation-states to govern their own affairs.
Extremism and terrorism must be condemned and prosecuted wherever they appear, by whatever name, and rationalized by whatever supposed prophetic sanction: Christian, Jew, Hindu, and Muslim all have their violent extremists, whose actions are justified by citing this or that passage in scripture. The strategy of the corrupt ruling elite to foment division and war between religions and civilizations is amply documented – and will be, someday, Inshallah (God willing) be prosecuted to the full extent of international human rights law.
One need only, according to the ancient dictum, follow the money – a tell-tale trail revealing what factions, agencies, and individuals in fact created the so-called Islamic State (aka I.S.I.S – called contemptuously by mainstream Muslims by the derogatory term Daesh). These are the same factions, agencies, and persons which have historically profited from the rivers of blood which rise in the wars they deliberately foment.
At the heart of each great religion is the mystic core of adoration of our One Mother-Father Beloved Creator. Achieving the burning goal of the mystic – the cellular realization of our Oneness with All Life – we find that we cannot any longer regard those of other faiths or other nations as anything but our brothers and sisters. Justice there must be, for always there is both the Sword and the Grail. But with the dawning of the Light of Bliss, divine love arises flood-like in the human heart, sweeping away all prejudice and fear. The world is indeed becoming too dangerous for anything but love, and too small for anything but brotherhood.
As a matter of simple survival of humanity, we must no longer blindly be subject to the propagandistic manipulations of corporate media, which seeks always to create division, and to serve up the enemy du jour to keep the warlords’ profits flowing – the “military-industrial complex” which General Eisenhower warned us of in his farewell address.
As Templars, we dare to dream of a time in the near future when our native human charity will overcome the tangled web of deception, and we will truly be brothers and sisters with those of all faiths, honoring our differences and worshipping according to our own traditions, while extending the hand of cooperation and compassion as member of one divine family, with a common Mother-Father.
The Sufi mystics of Islam were among the teachers of those first Templars in the early days of their excavations beneath the Temple Mount. When they learned of the true nature of the Templar quest for sacred knowledge, certain Sufi masters came to the Templars and offered to help them understand and practice the ancient scriptures they unearthed. “You have the cross,” they told the Templars, “But we have the meaning of the cross.”
Pir Zia Inayat Khan, author of “Saracen Chivalry,” grandson of renowned Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan
The great modern Sufi mystic Pir Zia Inayat Khan – the lineal carrier of the legacy of the great Hazrat Inayat Khan, the revered founder of the Sufi Order International – has written a marvelous book called “Saracen Chivalry,” which tells of this shared heritage of Muslim and Christian, of Saracen and Templar. In it, a dying Muslim Queen tells her sons of their heritage as sons of a Templar father – and of the true nature of chivalry for both men and women:
Your nourishment must be virtue. Generosity, courage, courtesy, and wisdom must be your constant practice…You must aspire to the knighthood of purity, and you must attain it. For as long as men and women have risen toward the good in thought, word, and deed, so long has chivalry graced the earth. Wherever revelation has come down, the order of chivalry has rallied to the prophet’s call, renewing its fealty to the ancient Covenant. Time and again, with the sweat and blood of its worthies it has redeemed its vow.
The chivalrous youth may be of any age in body, but in spirit she must be young. There is no place in this lionhearted band for the jaded and the cynical. And what is youthfulness? Call it unshakable hope, inexhaustible strength. Whether he be young or old, the gallant’s lips must always be moist with the water of life. As he sallies out into life’s perilous fray, his step should never flag.
The chivalry of men is called “futuwwa,” young manliness. The chivalry of women is named “niswan,” womanhood. In the Holy Koran, Ibrahim, Yusuf, Yushua, and the Companions of the Cave are known as “fityan,” young men. Maryam, Mother of Isa, is named “nisa,” a woman. These are the worthies of the blessed book, patterns for you to live by. Peace be upon them!
blessings,
Michael
(An excerpt from Templar Return - A Memoir of Hidden Gold, The Rising Goddess, and The Restoration of Chivalry, by Michael Henry Dunn)