Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter

Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter. By John Tolan. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2009- Pp. xvi, 382. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-199-23972-6.)

John Tolan presents his readers with a flickering movie reel of images of the meeting of St. Francis of Assisi and Malik al-Kamil, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt.The two met at Damietta in the midst of the Fifth Crusade, andTolan's book covers the visual and textual descriptions of the encounter from the first, written just six months later, to the most recent, referenced in op-ed pieces commenting on contemporary Christian-Muslim relations. Tolan deftly shows how each author or artist shifts the figures in the tableau, portraying and shaping European attitudes about sanctity, Islam, the crusades, and interreligious dialogue. In many ways, these authors and artists are the real subjects of Tolan 's book; they often emerge as far...