72 THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGES
Bernard the Treasurer indicates in his chronicle that in 1198 the
"Lord of the Assassins" (the Old Man of the Mountain) treated the
Christians and their leader, Count Henri, as royalty. The same author
informs us that in 1227 the sultan Coradin, at the time of his death,
entrusted his land and children to a Spanish knight who was a Templar
brother. "He was fully aware that this knight would faithfully protect
his land. He had no desire to leave it to the Saracens, for he knew full
well that they would entrust it to his brother, the Sultan of Babylon."*
It was through the intervention of the Templars in 1243 that the
Christians were able to conclude an accord with the malek of Damascus
and take possession of Jerusalem. In the following years, the Franks
made an alliance with the malik of Horns, al-Mansour. The Templars
made themselves noticeable by their eagerness to arrange this union. In
fact, they celebrated in their strongholds to such an extent that Islamic
prayers could be heard echoing beneath the roofs of their monasteries.^25
In 1247 the Templar grand master Guillaume de Sonnace got along so
well with the Turkish emirs that a chronicler wrote: "The master of the
Temple and the sultan of Egypt have made so strong a peace between
them that they bled themselves together every two years in the same
bowl."+
When the different branches of the military, governed mainly by
common interests, gave way to a peaceful coexistence, the Christians
found in the Muslim world a favorable milieu and climate. Claude
Cahen, a specialist in Islamic studies, came to this conclusion in his
summary work Orient et Occident au temps des Croisades: "The image
of the Muslim world up until the eleventh century is that of a very
- Guillaume de Tyr, Histoire des Croisades, vol. 4, 243, 414, Geoffrey de Tyr, who was
hostile toward the Templars, appears to have inflated the importance of the murder by
a Templar of an envoy from the Old Man of the Mountain to King Amaury. It turns out
that according to de Tyr himself this Templar, Gautier de Mesnil, had acted on his own.
The grand master Eude de Saint-Armand did not refuse to punish him; instead he refused
to surrender him to the king, making the argument that it was up to the sovereign order
or the pope to judge him. How Grousset (Histoire des Croisades, vol. 2, 600), who is
normally so perspicacious, could deduce from this murder that the Templars were the
sworn enemies of the Ismailis is puzzling.+
Saint Louis refused to profit from these negotiations and sharply criticised Guillaume
de Sonnace. This occurred during the Seventh Crusade (Boulenger, La Vie de Saint
Louis, Paris: Gallimard, 1929, 101).