The Saint and the Sultan: Religion, Conflict, and the Search for Peace

Nearly 800 years after St. Francis met Egypt’s Sultan Malik al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade, their peaceful encounter suggests a path toward improved Christian-Muslim relations. Their story is told in Paul Moses’s book "The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace", which won the 2010 Catholic Press Association award for best history book. Moses writes that in a violent era, Francis recovered the Christian traditions of nonviolence and of befriending enemies. At the same time, the sultan’s respect for Francis in the midst of the Crusade exemplified a Muslim tradition of reverence toward holy Christians. The sultan was a statesman who preferred trade, negotiation and peace to warfare. According to Moses, both men can serve as helpful models today.

---

Paul Moses is professor of journalism at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. In a 23-year career in daily journalism at Newsday in New York City, he wrote the paper's lead stories on major news events ranging from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to a 1991 subway crash that killed five people.

Moses is the author, with Robert F. Keeler, of "Days of Intense Emotion: Praying with Pope John Paul II in the Holy Land" (Resurrection Press, 2001) and, more recently, of "The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace" (Doubleday, 2009), which won the 2010 Catholic Press Association award for best history book.

---

Photography by Juliana Thomas Photography