Meanwhile Frederick had not gained a foot, and his presence was urgently needed in Sicily while he bootlessly wasted valuable time. It is not hard to believe his own later account that at times he wept with rage and grief and thought of turning back, but “I began to treat of peace and of agreements and hastened preparations for my return, concealing my consuming pain behind a cheerful countenance so that the enemy might not triumph and rejoice.” It is true that in these cheerless days negotiations were resumed by help from the enemy himself. The Sultan’s ambassador, the Amir Fakhru’d Din, was attached to Frederick by profound admiration and personal friendship. He gave the Emperor a hint that something might be accomplished by changing his envoy—the present one being none too acceptable to the Sultan. So Count Thomas of Aquino was sent once more to the Sultan in place of the notary while Frederick treated with Fakhru’d Din, which all goes to indicate how important the personal factor was throughout. The Emperor was a past master in the art of discussion. The charm of his personality, his astounding knowledge, his quickness of repartee made him the equal of any, though at times his passionate pride and his biting wit led him into danger. In this case, however, where he was not upholding claims but seeking favours, this danger was absent, and it may well be that, after all the dissensions of his own camp, the conversations with the cultured and courteous Fakhru’d Din were restful and refreshing. Frederick had complete command of Arabic, and was acquainted with the Arab poets; his amazing knowledge of philosophy, logic, mathematics and medicine, and every other branch of learning enabled him to turn any conversation into the philosophical channels dear to the Oriental heart. He had been completely successful in his handling of his Saracen colonists of Lucera, and now he moved amongst the Saracen princes with the perfect savoir faire of an accomplished man of the world. So he conversed away with Fakhru’d Din about philosophy and the arts of government, and Fakhru’d Din must have had much to tell his master about the Emperor.
Al Kamil was the very man to appreciate such qualities. He was an oriental edition of the Emperor, unless indeed it be more correct to call the Emperor an occidental edition of the Sultan. Al Kamil loved to dispute with learned men about jurisprudence and grammar, beloved especially of the Arab; he was himself a poet—some of his verses still survive—and in his mountain castle, as they tell, “fifty scholars reclined on divans round his throne to provide his evening conversation.” He spent money willingly in the furtherance of learning; founded a school in Cairo for the study of Islamic Tradition, and appointed salaries for jurists. People praised his courteous bearing as much as his stern and impressive dignity. In addition he was an admirable administrator, who checked his own revenues and even invented new varieties of tax. He had no more fancy than Frederick for aimless bloodshed if the end could be reached by friendly means, and so it came about that their negotiations presently bore fruit.
The little that we know suffices to make it clear that Frederick set himself to win the personal friendship of the Muslims. He had not come to seek conquests, but peaceably to take over the districts that had previously been offered him. “I should not have sought to win such terms from the Sultan had I not been fearful of losing my prestige amongst the Franks,” he said quite frankly at the close, and probably the same tone had prevailed throughout. While the negotiations were in progress not a whisper of their political significance was audible outside. People have sorely reproached the Emperor for this secretiveness, which, however, was imposed on him by the papal intrigues and the dissensions in the Christian camp. It was revolting to Gregory’s supporters that the Emperor should treat at all with unbelievers. Even the Swabian poet, the “Freidank,” an admirer of the Hohenstaufen, himself a Crusader, thought it high time there should be “an end of whisperings,” whose worth, in the absence of “high counsel,” he gravely questioned. Neither the papal nor the German party could tolerate this autocratic method of imperial negotiations, centring round the person of the Emperor alone, divorced from the advice of the great. Yet this method suited al Kamil as well as it suited the Emperor. We know that he was wont to conduct the affairs of state singlehanded, without reference to his Wazir; indeed, on the death of his Wazir he omitted to appoint a successor and contented himself with the services of a scribe. Frederick was shrewd enough to perceive how much might be achieved by mutual personal friendship and courtesy, that was unattainable by public discussion. A certain degree of give and take was possible in secret—and it was now a question of giving on both sides. The treaty which Frederick concluded on the 18th of February, 1229, is most obviously coloured by the personal desire to please on al Kamil’s side. The Christians, however, felt it to be rather a weak point that there were no guarantees on either side save the personal good faith of Emperor and Sultan. According to this agreement Frederick was to receive back Jerusalem with the exception of the Haramu’sh Sharif, the sacred enclosure in which the mosque of ‘Umar and the rock temple of Solomon were situated. The Christian pilgrims, however, were permitted to perform their prayers in this area, and the Muslims conversely theirs in Bethlehem, which was ceded to Frederick. The Emperor also acquired Nazareth and a strip of land running from Jerusalem to the coast, further Sidon and Caesarea, Jaffa and Acre, and some other places. All these might be fortified by the Christians, and, though the kingdom of Jerusalem was not to be militarised, a ten-year truce was concluded which Frederick hoped to renew with his friend al Kamil on its expiry.
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The treaty was not without its weak points, but the papalists’ attacks on it as a “patchwork” were unjust. Frederick II, the banned Emperor, had done what no other Emperor had succeeded in doing, what all Crusaders had failed to do since Saladin conquered Jerusalem—he had set free the Holy City. When Frederick assembled the German pilgrims and announced the news they broke out into shouts of uncontrolled rejoicing. On the advice of Hermann of Salza the Emperor decided himself to enter the liberated Jerusalem at the head of the pilgrims. The joy of his adherents was equalled only by the rage of his enemies. The Emperor’s success was for the Pope the most unwelcome thing that could have happened. The Patriarch, unsuccessfully, forbade the pilgrims to enter Jerusalem with the Emperor. He was infuriated by Frederick’s omission to consult him, and also by the rejoicing of the Germans, and wrote to the Pope: “The Germans had only one thought, to be free to visit the Holy Sepulchre; they were the only nation who raised paeans of praise and illuminated the town in festal wise; all others considered the whole thing a folly.”
Gerold’s hatred of the Emperor finally exceeded all bounds. He informed the Pope at great length about the treaty, emphasising pharisaically its weak points—many of which were primarily attributable to his own multiple treachery—and painted the Emperor as a fool who had allowed himself to be hoodwinked by the Mussulmans. He was more particularly embittered because the treaty contained not a word about the restoration of Church and Monastery property. The Pope lost no time in further blackening this report and circulating it to the world, maliciously representing Frederick’s conduct as disgraceful in treating at all with the Infidel and permitting the Heathen to worship in Jerusalem. He was skilful in glossing over the fact that Frederick had after all accomplished more than all the mighty Crusaders of recent times.
The loss of Jerusalem made so unhappy an impression on the Musulmans that it is quite clear that al Kamil had gone to the utmost limit of the possible. Saladin had written once to Cœur de Lion: “Jerusalem is to us as holy as to you, nay, more holy, for thence the Prophet made by night his flight to Heaven, and there the angels are wont to assemble.” The Khalif of Baghdad called him to account, the other Sultans were wroth with him, and mourning for the loss of the Holy City, which was felt to be a most bitter blow to Islam, rose to open demonstrations against al Kamil. Finally, a service of protest was held, which the Sultan punished only by the confiscation of the treasures of the mosque—an expedient which probably impressed Frederick. The Muslims, however, conceded that al Kamil, who had himself call
ed the Emperor to his help, had been in a dilemma, and they comforted themselves with thoughts of the future and of the Will of Allah. The Sultan’s advantage in this pact was slight, and consisted mainly in having secured for himself the opportunity of pursuing his campaigns of conquest undisturbed by a new Crusade, which would certainly have followed his refusal to surrender Jerusalem. Al Kamil’s relations with Kaiser Frederick grew more and more cordial, though partisans on both sides bitterly resented this friendship with one of an alien faith.
Frederick II owed his great success unquestionably to the Amir Fakhru’d Din, and tradition has it that the Emperor knighted him and gave him permission to wear the imperial eagle on his shield. There is nothing improbable in this; similar tales are told of Coeur de Lion. For the world of East and West was then one great knightly comradeship, in which there reigned so much common chivalry that the barriers of religion were not insuperable. The aristocratic standards of chivalry were indeed earlier developed in the East, in Persia, than in Europe, as the epic of Firdausi and many another poem reveals to us. Both in East and West this feeling for knightly comradeship was a living thing, and the epic of the West always represents the Saracen knights as conspicuously noble and distinguished: think only of Feirefiss,* Parzival’s black-and-white brother, of Ortnit’s helper, of the wise heathen Zacharias, of Ariosto’s Medor, and, above all, of Saladin, the pearl of oriental chivalry, to whom Dante accorded a place in Elysium, beside the great pagan heroes and poets, though it was he who had taken Jerusalem from the Christians.
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The Emperor had still something to learn of Saracen chivalry. He was anxious to visit the place of Christ’s baptism on the Jordan and set out from Jerusalem with a few followers. The Templars, who had allowed themselves to become the blind tools of the Patriarch, sent news of this expedition, apparently at the direct instigation of the Pope, to the Sultan al Kamil: here was his chance to take Frederick prisoner, and if he wished to make away with him. “Disgusted by this low treachery,” and not sorry to put to shame the Pope’s Christian knights, al Kamil sent the letter with a covering note to the Emperor, who from that time forward cherished an undying hatred of the Templars. He was grateful for the Sultan’s friendship, which he cherished till al Kamil’s death and then transferred to his son.
The Arabs on their side preserved kindly memories of the Emperor. Partly from motives of expediency and partly from genuine inclination Frederick II liked to make himself one of the Saracens. He had a great admiration for their science, and he purposely paraded also his unfeigned respect for their religion and their customs. The Muslims related many anecdotes of the Emperor in this regard, which tally well with utterances of Frederick’s. The Emperor, for instance, attended the Mosque of ‘Umar with one of the Sultan’s amirs. As he came forth he saw a Christian priest standing at the door of the sanctuary with the gospel in his hand begging from the pilgrims, and even from the Emperor himself. Enraged at this breach of the Saracen’s hospitality Frederick smote him on the chest and knocked him down, shouting “Thou viper…, we are naught but the slaves of the Sultan who allows us so many privileges, and thou darest to transgress the bounds that he has set! The next of you who so offends I shall most surely slay.” The Emperor’s violence when roused was well known, and many anecdotes of it are told.
In Jerusalem Frederick lodged in the house of the Qazi Shamsu’d Din. The Sultan had expressly given orders out of courtesy to his friend, whose religious feelings he did not wish to offend, that the muazzins must not chant the call to prayer during the Emperor’s stay. One of them forgot, and at the time for morning prayer mounted the minaret and sang out the verses, expressly directed against the Christian faith, “He begetteth not, neither is he begotten, and there is none like unto him,” and so forth. The Qazi reproved him and the next night he refrained. In the morning, however, the Emperor summoned the Qazi and asked him why the muazzin had not chanted the call to prayer. The Qazi quoted the Sultan’s orders. “O Qazi”—Frederick is said to have replied—“you are doing wrong to alter your cult, your customs, your religion for my sake. You would not need to do so even if you were in my country.” This was quite true. An Arabic scholar, who in later years visited King Manfred, was not a little surprised to hear the muazzins calling the faithful to prayer from the minarets of Lucera. The story about different religions and the three rings was told in relation to Frederick. The Arabs learnt on another occasion that the Emperor refused to be hedged within conventional boundaries and had an opinion of his own about religion, differing in many points from that current in his day. On the cupola of the Sakhrah mosque in Jerusalem Frederick read the golden inscription of the conqueror Saladin: “Saladin cleansed this temple of the polytheists.” The Emperor pretended not to understand, and for the pleasure of seeing the Muslims’ embarrassment insisted on their explaining to him who the polytheists could be. They told him that the Christians with their Trinity were meant. He then went on to ask “What is the point of the grill over the doors of the mosque?” “To keep out the sparrows”; where upon the Emperor—using the Arabic term of contempt for Christians as “unclean”—smiled and said, “Yet Allah has brought the swine amongst you after all.”
With phrases like these Frederick II shocked even the Saracens themselves; they thought he could scarcely be even a Christian, but must be some materialist who denied the immortality of the soul. They had no great opinion of his looks—he was beardless and of medium height—“If he were a slave,” they said, “he would not be worth two hundred drachmas”; but his dignified bearing and his bonhomie were appreciated. The Muslims were amazed when at the time of midday prayer almost all the Emperor’s servants and one of his teachers stood up and went through the orthodox Muhammadan ritual as true believers: they were the Sicilian Saracens of the Emperor’s household.
So Frederick did not even maintain the pretence of a war for the faith: his Crusade was purely an affair of state, a matter concerning the Empire, not the Church, and this could not have been made clearer than by the existence of his Muslim retinue. It was perfectly natural for Frederick, from the political point of view, to pose as an Oriental here in Syria. Napoleon in Egypt was prepared to go considerable lengths and loved to be called Sultan al Kabir. Making due allowance for the difference of centuries great men on the human side are much alike. Each of these wanted in the East to be an Oriental. The same impulse made Frederick occasionally use pure oriental formulas. In concluding the Treaty he swore, for instance, “to eat the flesh of his left hand” if he should break the agreement. Once, when negotiations had come to a standstill, the Emperor advanced towards Jaffa, sending—in the symbolism of the Orient—his imperial weapons, armour and helmet, to the Sultan to indicate that he still had these resources behind him.
The Orient had different connotations for these two great men. Unstinted admiration of the Arab mind was the weightiest factor with the Hohenstaufen Emperor. For Frederick II lived in a day when the East was the source of all European knowledge and science, as Italy and Roman culture were to the barbarian North, as of old the art and philosophy of Hellas were to Italy. The spirit of the medieval Church was imprisoned in formula and dogma, the fetters could be loosened only by oriental hellenistic knowledge, chiefly knowledge of the laws of Nature. Frederick was more determined than any contemporary to unlock these stores of knowledge, and he was destined to be, in virtue of his mental receptiveness and his Sicilian birth, the great intermediary and reconciler of East and West. He may be seen in philosophic discourse with Fakhru’d Din, exchanging geometric and algebraic questions with al Kamil, mixing with the most celebrated Arab astronomers whom he had begged the Sultan to lend him. Architecture again claimed his attention, as so often. He studied the octagonal Mosque of ‘Umar in Jerusalem, with the cupola of green and gold and the artistic pulpit, which he mounted with admiration. He even collected information for his hunting. “When we were in the Orient we observed that the Arabs themselves use a hood in hawking, for the Arab kings s
ent us their most skilful falconers with falcons of every kind.”
It is self-evident that affairs of state naturally challenged his most serious attention; a conversational fragment is instructive. He was discussing the Khalifate with Fakhru’d Din. The Amir explained to the Emperor how the Khalifate of the Abbasids could be traced back in unbroken line to al Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, and thus still remained in the family of the Founder. “That is excellent,” said Frederick, “far superior to the arrangement of those fools, the Christians. They choose as their spiritual head any fellow they will, without the smallest relationship to the Messiah, and they make him the Messiah’s representative. That Pope there has no claim to such a position, whereas your Khalif is the descendant of Muhammad’s uncle.” Here speaks the pride of race of one who later loved to style himself “son and grandson of Emperors and Kings”—in contrast to the Pope—and here we see too his reverence for natural above spiritual law, for Frederick was fully emancipated from the excessive mysticism of his time.
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