The Shaping of European-Arab Memory

Layers of Alienation and the Shaping of European-Arab Memory: Modes of Remembering the Visit of the Italian Monk Francis of Assisi to Egypt

Dr. Muhammad al-Zekri, Bahrain

Alienation, "A Foreign Land," and Heavenly Citizenship

On the fourth of October every year, the Church celebrates the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226 AD). This occasion calls us to recall and reflect upon how the presence of this Italian theological figure was shaped during his visit to Damietta, Egypt, and its profound impact on the perspectives and frameworks of "Entangled Memory." The objective does not stop at mapping how Western thought retrieved this famous visit to the East (retrieval from memory); rather, it extends to reconstructing the analytical trajectory. It moves from a one-sided formation (how Europe remembered the East) to a reciprocal, dynamic trajectory that explores how the concept of "alienation" operates in shaping both European and Arab memories together. In this sense, memory is not understood as a solitary retrieval of the past within a closed cultural frame, but as a social process in which memories intertwine and interact across different borders and traditions (Feindt et al., 2014). Consequently, what matters most in this recollection is not merely listing abstract historical facts, but understanding how memory is utilized, the modes of remembering, and the occasions on which this event is recalled (Assmann, 1997, 2006).

In this context, the Franciscan Media website republished, in a recent 2024 issue, a text by the Belgian monk and writer Omer Englebert (1893–1991), titled "Meeting Sultan Malik al-Kamil: St. Francis in a Foreign Land." The text addresses the journey of the monk Francis to Egypt and his encounter with the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil in 1219 AD, against the backdrop of the Fifth Crusade (Englebert, 2024). In this text, Englebert recalls Francis's presence in the unknown as an existence in "a foreign land," evoking his absence from the familiar environment of Europe. One might argue that all European lands in the thirteenth century—with their diverse languages and cultures—were foreign to a monk born in the Italian town of Assisi. What, then, is the secret behind the centrality of the phrase "a foreign land" specifically when discussing Egypt?

Accordingly, this research adopts "alienation" as an Analytical Lens that elevates the historical event (the Damietta encounter of 1219 AD) from the realm of mere factual documentation into the expansive domain of cultural and philosophical theology. In contemporary critical theory, Hartmut Rosa reconstructed the concept of alienation within his analysis of social acceleration, clarifying that it manifests in human relationships with time, space, objects, and actions, just as it appears in relations with the self and others. Thus, the concept becomes a tool for understanding the distortion of human relations with the world, rather than a mere description of an individual feeling of isolation or detachment (Rosa, 2010).

From this standpoint, the research borrows the concept of "alienation" as a deconstructive tool to examine different layers of relationship with the Other, space, and memory. Existential alienation allows a reading of the intersections between monasticism and Sufism in their stances toward the temporal world. Meanwhile, hermeneutic alienation permits an examination of the distance that arises when confronting the distinct Other, and how this distance transitions from an obstacle to understanding into a realm for re-interpretation, listening, and the reshaping of memory. Hence, "alienation" is not deployed in this research as a predetermined outcome of Francis's encounter with the East, but rather as a lens through which we read the event and its subsequent layers of remembrance and interpretation.

Layers of Alienation in Christian Theology and the Context of Travel

To deconstruct the significance of "a foreign land" applied by Omer Englebert to Francis of Assisi's experience, it is necessary to return to Latin Christian theology and its spiritual concepts surrounding "strangeness / alienation / peregrinatio." Here, strangeness is not attributed solely to physical, geographical distance; it also points to a spiritual and existential condition that characterizes the Christian believer's posture toward the values and institutions of the worldly realm:

Existential Alienation and Earthly Sojourning (Earthly Alienation): This concept stems from the biblical text that describes believers as "strangers and pilgrims" on earth (1 Peter 2:11); the earthly world is not understood here as the believer's final home.

Heavenly Citizenship: The ultimate home of the Christian in eschatological conception is tied to heavenly citizenship; spiritually, this can engender a sense of relative alienation from certain values and structures of the temporal world.

Solitude and Monastic Withdrawal (Monastic Retreat): Historically, this idea deepened when monks and hermits chose separation from familiar social life to live in deserts, wildernesses, and monasteries, dedicating themselves to worship and the spiritual pursuit of God.

Here, a double significance emerges for Francis’s journey to Egypt: it is an "alienation upon alienation"—an existential and monastic alienation from certain worldly values, compounded by a physical, geographical, and cultural crossing into an Arab-Islamic society and a landscape utterly distinct from his Latin environment.

Ethics of "Welcoming the Stranger" and Xenophilia

Here a conceptual question arises: Does Francis's movement toward Egypt suggest that alienation in Christian thought was not necessarily a means of turning inward, but could open an horizon for what might be called "love of the stranger" (Xenophilia)—an ethical and spiritual openness to the distinct Other?

Was the East, in Francis’s eyes, a "concealment of Jesus son of Mary (much like the concealment of the servant al-Khidr among people) in the form of a stranger" (Christ in Disguise)? This interpretation grounds itself in evangelical teachings that link service to the stranger with service to Christ Himself: "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40). However, moving from this general evangelical principle to claiming that it explicitly describes Francis’s experience in Egypt remains an interpretation that demands caution. Or was Francis applying the concept of "Sacred Hospitality," where welcoming strangers in certain Christian traditions transformed into a religious and moral duty, wherein the stranger is received as a human being bearing the dignity of a guest?

From this ethical and theological perspective, Francis of Assisi's crossing of battle lines in Damietta can be read not as a mere adventure into enemy territory, but as a movement toward the distinct "Other"—one that can be recalled in subsequent memory as a transition from lines of confrontation to a space of recognition and spiritual listening. This analytical braid, interwoven from multiple strands, cannot decisively fix the singular meaning of "alienation" invoked by Omer Englebert. Nevertheless, these concepts open an horizon for understanding and interpreting the experience across overlapping theological and cultural dimensions.

Who is the Stranger in Christian Theological Memory?

We can state that Christ Himself was born, lived, and suffered in the lands of the Middle East, and within this very geographical expanse, early monastic movements arose—particularly in Egypt and the Levant—at the hands of those later known as the "Desert Fathers and Mothers" (Hänsch & al-Zekri, 2024). Thus, when we question Omer Englebert’s motivation for recalling Francis’s journey as a voyage into alienation, we find ourselves before an overlap of several acts of remembrance: remembering the origin of the Eastern Christian experience, remembering early desert monasticism, and remembering the European monk arriving to meet the East once again.

It is worth emphasizing that studying the act of recalling historical forms of religious alienation and its figures connects directly to the study of cultural and historical memory in the work of Jan Assmann. He demonstrated that events and figures are not merely retrieved in religious and cultural memory as they occurred; rather, they enter into processes of re-interpretation and re-shaping within the present. Within this framework, religious traditions do not merely preserve the past; they select elements from it, formulate them, and retrieve them in ways that grant contemporary experience renewed meaning (Assmann, 1997).

In our current paper, however, we will focus only on the recollections of alienation. We stand before multiple levels of it that surround us and within which we reside at the same time. There are recollections of different types of alienation, framed in contexts suited to the functions of the present and the "here and now." Did the monk Francis become alienated by going to Egypt in order to draw closer to the lands where the ancestors of the monastic movement—who established its early traditions, namely the "Desert Fathers and Mothers"—lived, and of which he is a later extension? Or did he come here to remind us that we became alienated from Europe when we failed to build the bridges that allow us to meet in the embrace of a shared spirituality? Or did he come to remind us that between us and Sufism there is a brotherhood in being strangers, serving the common people amid the alienation of this world?

The Geography of the First Encounter: Eastern Monks in the Islamic East and Literary Memory

The history of spiritual encounter between Christians and Muslims did not begin with Francis of Assisi's visit to Damietta in 1219 AD. Long before the thirteenth century, Christian monastic communities formed an integral part of the cultural and social fabric of the Near East. In the deserts of Egypt, the wildernesses of the Levant, the lands of Iraq, and the fringes of the Arabian Peninsula, Christian hermits and monks lived within geographical and cultural spaces that later became part of the Islamic world. Thus, the early presence of Christian monasticism in these environments was not a distant contact between two alien civilizations, but part of a complex social and cultural reality in which various forms of coexistence and interaction emerged.

This early presence was clearly reflected in Islamic literary memory, where the Christian monk appears in early books of ascetical literature (zuhd) as an embodied archetype of detachment from the world, celibacy, and devotion to worship. The Kit?b al-Ruhb?n ("Book of Monks") by al-H?fi? Ibn Ab? al-Duny? (d. 281 AH) serves as an important witness to the formation of this memory; it preserves literary material and Islamic narratives in which the figure of the monk is invoked to reflect upon the meanings of the fear of God, spiritual poverty, weeping, and earnestness in seeking the Hereafter (al-Zekri, 2024). This symbolic invocation does not imply a direct theological derivation or institutional transfer from Latin or Eastern monasticism to Islamic Sufism; rather, it points to the presence of the Eastern Christian monk’s image within the spiritual landscape that framed early Islamic reflection on the concept of ascetism (zuhd).

This shared space revealed points of harmony and affinity between monks and nuns on one hand, and Sufis (male and female) on the other, uncovering domains of spiritual convergence without erasing points of dogmatic and institutional difference. Both groups can be viewed, in certain representations of spiritual memory, as "companions in alienation" in the earthly abode, united by a convergent awareness of the importance of spirituality, affiliation with heavenly citizenship, and service to the common people amid their existential alienation.

Conceptual Deconstruction of the Layers of Alienation

In the experience of Francis of Assisi, multiple levels of the concept of "alienation" overlap, where theological dimensions intersect with geographical and cultural ones:

Existential and Earthly Alienation (Earthly Alienation): This layer grounds itself in the biblical concept that views the believer as a "stranger and pilgrim" in the world (1 Peter 2:11). From this perspective, Francis’s act of renouncing wealth and social status and choosing a life of poverty can be read as a practical expression of a critical spiritual stance toward values of ownership and prestige in his society (Englebert, 2024). From here arises the question: Is Saint Francis a stranger in a foreign land among strangers?

Heavenly Citizenship and Monastic Alienation (Monastic Retreat & Heavenly Citizenship): In Christian monastic traditions, ascetism and withdrawal from certain worldly modes of life were linked to the pursuit of a life dedicated to God. A monk might choose solitude, poverty, or simplicity, not merely as social alienation, but as a spiritual practice. Historically, this trajectory connects to early monastic traditions and to the movement of the "Friars Minor" associated with Francis in Assisi (McMichael, 2011; Tolan, 2009).

Geographical and Cultural Alienation — Crossing Toward the "Other" (Geographical & Cultural Alienation): Existential and monastic alienation was compounded for Francis when geographical and cultural crossing was added to it. His movement was not merely a withdrawal to a hermitage in Italy, but an outing into a distinct cultural, religious, and political space. He arrived in Egypt in 1219 AD in the context of the Fifth Crusade and crossed into the camp of Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil—a fact confirmed by the early testimony of Jacques de Vitry and discussed in modern studies of the encounter (McMichael, 2011).

Shared Spiritual Alienation (Mystical Alienation & Spiritual Proximity): In this same Eastern expanse, we can observe certain points of convergence between the concept of alienation in some Christian traditions and images of alienation and ascetism in Islamic Sufism. Here, the spiritual human being is viewed as detached, to varying degrees, from worldly attachment while remaining engaged in serving people. Hence arises the hypothesis of "spiritual proximity": despite deep dogmatic and theological differences between Islam and Christianity, we can observe between Francis’s experience and certain expressions of Islamic ascetism a space of convergence in the vocabulary of spiritual poverty, detachment from ownership and power, and the search for God amid the world's alienation (al-Zekri, 2024).

From the Eastern Monk to the European Itinerant Monk: A Shift in the Geography of Memory

Francis of Assisi represents an important turning point in the direction of religious memory. The Christian monk in the early Islamic centuries was a son of the East, living within multi-religious Eastern societies, and his image appears in certain Islamic literary works. Francis, however, was a European monk who came from Italy to Egypt in the context of the Fifth Crusade. Francis’s crossing to Damietta created a new possibility in European memory. The Islamic world was no longer merely a distant geography about which news was reported; it became a place entered by a European itinerant monk (Mendicant Friar), who stood before a Muslim ruler, and then returned to the Christian world carrying the memory of an experience that became open to retrieval and re-interpretation (McMichael, 2011; Tolan, 2009).

Dimensions of the Encounter in Damietta (1219 AD): Historical Criticism and the Retrieval of Meaning

The historical encounter between Saint Francis and the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil took place during the Fifth Crusade at Damietta in 1219 AD. Sources regarding the event and its interpretations vary across history, making a distinction between early testimony and subsequent memory essential:

Early Contemporary Testimonies: The writings of Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre contemporary to the event, provide early testimony of Francis’s crossing into the Sultan's camp and his attempt to preach. McMichael notes that the earliest report of the encounter dates back to Jacques de Vitry's writings in 1220 AD, while open questions remain regarding Francis's motivations and the details of what occurred in the Sultan's court (McMichael, 2011).

Medieval Theological and Hagiographical Deployments: Later Franciscan sources, including the writings of Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure, developed different narratives of the encounter and reintegrated it into the spiritual and hagiographical narrative of Francis. Therefore, these sources should be approached as texts serving specific narrative purposes and contexts, rather than neutral reports of the event (McMichael, 2011; Tolan, 2009).

Modern Interpretations of Dialogue and Peace: In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the encounter was re-interpreted within contexts of interfaith dialogue, peace, and reconciliation; thus, Francis came to be recalled in certain modern discourses as a symbol of these values. This modern invocation should not be projected retroactively onto the event itself, but understood as a phase in the formation of subsequent memory. This is clearly visible in how contemporary Franciscan institutions retrieve the encounter as a resource for interreligious dialogue (Englebert, 2024).

As Jan Assmann illustrates in his study of cultural memory, the study of the past does not stop at retrieving abstract facts; it is also concerned with how events and figures are stored and re-interpreted within religious and cultural traditions (Assmann, 1997, 2006). From this perspective, Maurice Halbwachs’s collective memory helps us understand how groups retrieve past events within changing social and cultural frameworks (Halbwachs, 1992).

Ethics of "Welcoming the Stranger" and the Return of Memory to Egypt

Francis's experience opens an ethical horizon that redefines engagement with the distinct Other through the concepts of "welcoming the stranger" (Sacred Hospitality) and "love of the stranger" (Xenophilia) as interpretive concepts that aid in reading the experience, rather than fixed historical terms describing Francis's own posture. Crossing battle lines was not an attempt to eliminate dogmatic divergence; rather, it can be read in subsequent memory as an approach toward the Other and a readiness to meet him. From here, the image of the encounter between Francis and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil acquires particular importance in modern studies on the history of Christian-Muslim relations.

The most striking aspect in the history of this memory is its geographical return to Egypt itself. In 2019, on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the Damietta encounter, the memory of the meeting was retrieved in contemporary religious and dialogical contexts. Thus, the memory shaped by Europe regarding the Middle East traveled back, in modern forms, to the geographical land that witnessed the original event—retrieved within a present seeking new possibilities for brotherhood and spiritual dialogue.

Conclusion: The Stranger, Strangers, and the Ethics of "Mitigating Alienations"

Ultimately, Francis of Assisi’s experience of crossing battle lines in Damietta reveals itself not as an endeavor to erase dogmatic divergence or dissolve theological distinctions between followers of religions, but as an experience that can be read, in light of subsequent memory, as an approach toward the distinct Other and an attempt to meet him. From here, the meaning of "alienation" can be retrieved not as an absolute rupture, but as an experience that may open, in certain contexts, the possibility of mutual acquaintance and listening.

We live today in an intense and tense era, suffocated by the language of war, clashed by conflicting identities, and complicated by polarizations among followers of religions and cultures. Amid this civilization-wide constriction, the need arises to retrieve that spiritual insight: that human beings live, in one dimension of their existential experience, an alienation in this life, and that recognizing this alienation may open space for recognizing the alienation of the Other.

Out of this shared realization of "existential alienation," an ethical responsibility takes shape, represented in "welcoming the stranger" and opening doors and hearts to the distinct Other. Sacred hospitality does not mean erasing difference; rather, it means providing a space in which the Other can appear as Other, where their voice can be heard, and their human and spiritual dignity recognized.

Hence, the concept of "mitigating alienations" can become an interpretive entry point for reading Francis’s experience in light of contemporary memory. The intention is not to eliminate alienation—since alienation is an intrinsic part of human and spiritual experience—but to soften its severity when it transforms from isolation into knowledge, from fear into listening, and from confrontation into recognition.

Therefore, the question that remains open before us is not only: What happened between Francis and the Sultan in 1219 AD? But also: Why do we recall this encounter today? What are we searching for in this retrieval? Do we recall Francis because he was in "a foreign land," or because we too are searching for a meaning for alienation in a world where distances are increasing, despite people's physical proximity to one another?

Perhaps one of the possibilities of this memory lies in Francis reminding us that alienation is not always a rupture, and that difference does not necessarily prevent the possibility of an encounter. Perhaps he also reminds us that the Christian monk and the Muslim ascetic, despite their differing dogmatic and historical frameworks, can appear in certain representations of spiritual memory as companions in alienation; both reside in the earthly world, and both seek, in their own way, to serve the human being living in this world.

Thus, retrieving Francis in the context of the meeting with Muslims should not turn into an attempt to erase historical and dogmatic differences, but into an opportunity to understand how memory is formed, how communities retrieve their figures and events, and how the past can be invoked in the present—not to embellish history, but to rethink our relationship with the Other.

In this sense, Francis was not the beginning of the encounter between Christians and Muslims, but he became an important part of the way Europe remembered its encounter with the Islamic world. Perhaps the value of this memory today lies in the fact that it does not ask us to erase alienation, but to learn how to live it together, to mitigate our mutual alienations, and to search, amidst our differences, for spaces that allow human beings to see in the stranger a fellow human, in the distinct Other a partner in the spiritual quest, and in memory a domain for rebuilding bridges.

 

References and Sources

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