Legacy of a Saint and Sultan

Damietta: The Story of the Saint and the Sultan
 

The Setting

The crusaders landed at the mouth of the Nile River in May of 1218. Their goal was to deal a death blow to Islam by conquering Egypt and by using its strategic location and vast resources to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control. For more than a year, they laid siege to the heavily defended city of Damietta and its 80,000 inhabits. As Christian and Muslim forces fought their way to a bloody stalemate, the poor citizens of Damietta, their supply lines cut off by the European invaders, slowly starved to death.
 

Francis arrived at the crusader camp in early August of 1219. He came to Damietta neither to bear arms against Islam nor to serve as a chaplain to the Christian soldiers. Instead, he came to fulfill his long-standing desire to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in the non-Christian world. Francis seems to have had grave doubts about the crusade. The armies of Europe claimed to be marching under the banner of Christ, but there was little that was Christ-like about their behavior. How could such brutality serve the one who said: “Love your enemies and do good to them” (Luke 6:35)? After the crusaders suffered heavy losses at the hands of Sultan al-Kamil’s army, their leaders weighed the pros and cons of accepting a peace offer from the sultan. The lull in the fighting gave Francis his chance to act. Accompanied by another friar, he crossed enemy lines, unarmed and without a military escort. He thought that if he could only reach the sultan and persuade him to embrace Christianity, the carnage would end. The sultan’s soldiers probably mistook Francis and his companion for diplomatic envoys, and led them to al-Kamil. 

The Meeting

Neither the sultan nor the saint got what he expected from the meeting. Contrary to Christian propaganda, Francis discovered that the Muslim sultan was a cultured, gracious, warmly hospitable gentleman, with a lively intellect and a keen interest in religious debate. Contrary to Muslim prejudice, the sultan discovered that this particular Christian was, indeed, a holy man: deeply spiritual, peaceful, humble, receptive, and respectful. The sultan invited Francis to make his case for Christianity. Since Francis seems not to have run afoul of Muslim sensibilities nor been accused of blaspheming Allah, he must have avoided inflammatory rhetoric, and stressed what he and his hearers had in common rather than what divided them. At the conclusion of their long conversation, the sultan arranged for Francis’s safe passage back to the crusaders’ camp.

The Aftermath

Francis did not succeed in converting the sultan to Christianity, nor did the sultan and his religious advisors succeed in converting Francis to Islam. Neither did their meeting immediately stem the bloodshed of the crusades. But both men were transformed by the encounter. When the Christian forces were finally defeated, Sultan al-Kamil showed remarkable kindness and compassion toward his former enemies. He not only spared their lives; he generously fed them from his own resources. For his part, Francis was deeply impressed by the religious devotion of the sultan and his army. He urged Christian rulers to adopt the Muslim practice of a public call to prayer at set times of the day. When he sent more friars to preach the gospel in Muslim lands, Francis insisted that they “not engage in arguments or disputes” but that they live humbly and peaceably among the Muslims, preaching the gospel by the quiet witness of their holy lives (Rule of 1221, 16:5-6). This was a far different approach to missionary activity and religious conversion than the violence and coercion of the crusades.  

The Legacy

For several days that September of 1219, in the midst of a savage war between competing cultures and religions, two men sat down together and searched for common ground. Their meeting changed their attitudes, altered their perspectives, and influenced their subsequent behavior. It left them mutually enriched. It also left us a legacy of respectful, inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue. It is this 800 year-old tradition, bestowed on us by a Catholic Christian saint and a Sunni Muslim sultan, which the programs and services of the Damietta Cross-Cultural Center seek to honor and advance at Siena College.