Saint Francis and the Sultan The Curious History of a Christian–Muslim Encounter By John Tolan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 382 pages.)

Abstract

In August or September 1219 at the height of the Fifth Crusade, Francis of
Assisi audaciously set out to meet Sultan Malik al-Kâmil of Egypt. In Saint
Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian–Muslim Encounter,
historian John Tolan has produced a fascinating volume on this rather
strange episode, an encounter that has captivated writers and painters for centuries.
In an age when religion has lost much of its traditional power, however,
the author wonders how much we can really know about the experience of
Francis and al-Kâmil meeting each other “in a tent in an armed camp on the
banks of the Nile, during a truce in the midst of a bloody war” (p. 4). Instead
of trying to locate the real Francis and al-Kâmil in the fragments of history,
Tolan asks why this particular has fascinated so many different artists. He answers,
quite simply, that “for them, it was not merely a curiosity, or a footnote
to the history of a crusade which failed on the banks of the Nile. It was much
more: an emblematic encounter or confrontation between East and West” (p.
326). Whether it was seen as an encounter or a confrontation, in turn, depended in part on the historical, religious, and political context within which the given
artist was working. In this sense, the book reads more like a metahistory of
how, why, and to what effect a particular historical episode has been depicted
over the years.
Given the focus on such a momentous encounter between East and West,
Islam and Christianity, Muslim and Christian, as well as how it has been portrayed
and understood, this book should be of particular interest to students of
Christian–Muslim relations and dialogue. It should also be of interest to people
interested in the construction of East/West and Muslim/Christian identity ...