On the historical plan, the relations between Islam and Germany in the Middle ages were not just political ones, but civilizational ones as well. Fredrick II Hohenstaufen was not only a ”founder” of the specific shape of German sympathy towards Islam, he also started the pattern to which all the later attempts of western understanding of Islam aligned to.
As a Christian ruler, Fredrick fought against political Islam, but he also admired it’s bravery, without doubt. Fredrick’s Islam was an Islam of peace, modesty and profound lifestyle.
Fredrick saw the contact between Islam and the Germans as something more than just a mere ”clash of Germanic war spirit” and ”Islamic war fervour”.
On sicily (where his court was), this extraordinary Island of contact, civilizational syncretism and even merging, the free spirits of one faith met the free spirits of the other. Together they strived to tear the cultural bons which divided them in order to create something unique in the world.
Fredrick II enjoyed the supremacy of Islamic intellect i profoundness of the Islamic Oriental civilization which was ahead of his time. Frederick’s contemporaries called him stupor mundi, the “astonishment of the world”.
Fredrick was unique, some even go so far and say that he was secretly a Muslim, during the Crusades he made friends with Saladin’s descendant, Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil, they camped together in front of the walls of Jerusalem for 5 months, often discussing religion, philosophy and warfare.
Sultan summoned him into Jerusalem and entertained him in the most lavish fashion. When the muezzin, out of consideration for Frederick, failed to make the morning call to prayer, the emperor declared: “I stayed overnight in Jerusalem, in order to overhear the prayer call of the Muslims and their worthy God.”
Fredrick employed much of the local Muslims into his army, bodyguard units, made them chief architects, builders, doctors and advisers to him.
He owned a large library in the city of Palermo which contained various scriptures and books on science imported from the Muslim Near East.
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