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| Author | Robert Shea |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Saracen |
| Genre(s) | Historical fiction |
| Publisher | Ballantine |
| Released | April/March 1989 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 468/357 pages (Paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0345335880/ISBN 034535933X (Paperback edition) |
| Preceded by | All Things Are Lights |
The Saracen is a two-part novel written by Robert Shea. The two separate portions, The Land of the Infidel and The Holy War are a continuous tale.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
The novel is the portrayal of an English-born man named David, who is captured as a very young child and sold into slavery to Baibars, a Mameluke officer. He becomes a devout believer in Islam and takes the Arabic form of his name and the surname of a convert, Daoud ibn Abdullah. He develops into a gifted warrior and assassin. He is sent to the Papal Court in the 13th century as a spy, in order to foil an alliance between the Christian West and the Mongolian descendants of Ghengis Khan to exterminate the Muslim faith and capture the Holy Land.
Daoud was also trained by the Hashishyya, a heretical Islamic order. One of the many spellings of their name, Hashshashin, is where we derive the modern word "assassin". Shea spends considerable time discussing their techniques and philosophy, and it is a major theme of the book.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel opens with Daoud coming to King Manfred of Sicily's palace in Lucera, posing as a merchant from Trebizond named David Burian. Manfred, who was tolerant of Islam, had advance notice of his arrival from Baibars, whom he had alerted to the possibility of an alliance between the Crusaders and the Mongols. Such an alliance would be as dangerous to Manfred as the Muslim world, as Manfred was not in favour with other Christian kings who desired his land and title and had been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for allying with Saracens.
Manfred provides Daoud with money to finance his mission - the assassination of the Mongol ambassadors - and provides him with two travelling companions; Lorenzo, his trusted bodyguard, and Sophia, a Byzantine woman who loves Manfred deeply and is his concubine. His private reasons for sending them are to have Lorenzo keep tabs on Daoud, whom he does not entirely trust, and because his wife has grown jealous of his relationship with Sophia.
The three (along with Lorenzo's boar hound, Scipio) travel north, headed for the Papal court in Orvieto. Outside Rome, they encounter an older Jewish man and his young daughter being accosted by a group of thugs; Daoud intervenes, although too late to save the man, who is mortally wounded. It turns out the young girl is his wife, Rachel, whom he had married as a kindness. Rachel joins the travellers, hoping to find some kind of life in Orvieto.
Meanwhile, young French knight Simon de Gobignon greets the Mongol ambassadors and their Armenian bodyguards in Vienna with his small entourage of knights and hired Viennese crossbowmen, among them Sordello, a self-described troubadour of thuggish appearance. They escort the Mongols to Orvieto, but along the way, Sordello nearly murders one of the Armenian bodyguards in a tavern brawl, and Simon dismisses him from his service.
Daoud and his companions arrive in Orvieto shortly after the Mongols, after encountering a heavyset woman named Tilia outside the city, a powerful and wealthy brothel owner in the city. She is in communication with Baibars, and she brings them to the home of Cardinal Ugolini, who is sympathetic to Daoud's aims through his great love of Eastern knowledge and science, which Daoud uses to buy his complicity. Sophia moves into Ugolini's palace under the guise of being his niece, and Daoud moves in as well, as Ugolini would naturally be interested in his information and trade goods. Lorenzo moves into a nearby inn, and Rachel is taken in by Tilia.
(more to come)
Interwoven through the story are flashbacks to Daoud's past, beginning with the murder of his parents in Jerusalem and Baibars buying him at a slave trader's market. The flashbacks describe Daoud's conversion to Islam and his training as a Mameluke. He falls in love in his early teens with his tentmate Nicetas, a Greek boy, and Shea implies that homosexual relationships amongst Mamkelukes at this age were common, as they were forbidden contact with women until older. When Nicetas is murdered by a thuggish Mameluke jealous of his riding and javelin skills, Daoud plots and successfully carries out his murder. Baibars is not fooled by Daoud's plot, but is sufficiently impressed to send him to the Hashishiiya for training as an assassin. Daoud is a success, and after viewing the wreckage of Baghdad after the Mongols slaughter the entire city, takes part in the battle outside Cairo which stopped the Mongol invasion of the Muslim world. The reigning sultan, Qutuz, shows himself a coward in the battle and behaves poorly towards the Mongol prisoners afterwards, disgusting Baibars, who has been plotting to take control of the throne for years. He sends Daoud shortly after to assassinate him, which Daoud successfully does in the midst of a crowd of hundreds without being detected, allowing Baibars to take the throne. Daoud is betrothed to one of Baibars's daughters just before Baibars sends him to Italy, bringing the events of Daoud's life around to the beginning of the novels.
[edit] Characters in The Saracen
[edit] Fictional characters
- Daoud ibn Abdullah - Mameluke warrior and assassin
- Simon de Gobignon - French knight and illegitimite son of Roland, a troubadour, and Nicolette de Gobignon
- Sophia Karaiannides - Byzantine courtesan, formerly to Michael VIII Palaeologus, Emperor of Constantinople and Manfred, King of Sicily, in love with both Daoud and Simon
- Lorenzo - Captain of Manfred's guards, companion and friend to Daoud
- Tilia - Orvieto brothel owner, co-conspirator of Daoud's
- Cardinal Ugolini - Italian cardinal, co-conspirator of Daoud's
- Cardinal de Verceuil - French cardinal, protector of Mongols, enemy of Manfred
- Rachel - Jewish teenage girl, prostitute in Tilia's brothel, companion to Philip, Mongol ambassador
[edit] Historical characters
- Manfred, King of Sicily
- Baibars, Sultan of Cairo
- Thomas Aquinas, Dominican friar
- Sordello, Italian troubadour and mercenary
- Charles of Anjou, French count who covets Manfred's land and title
- Louis IX, King of France
[edit] Historical references
Many of the characters in the novel, such as Thomas Aquinas, Baibars, King Manfred, Louis IX and Charles of Anjou are historical figures, woven into the fictional canvas Shea invented. Some historians believe that an alliance was attempted by the Papal Court (with Louis IX's backing) with the Mongols against the Muslim world, which ultimately failed. Shea has created a fictional scenario to explain this failure, and his firmly historical figures (such as Aquinas) are set side-by-side with wholly fictional characters and semi-legendary figures such as the Italian poet Sordello, whose accomplishments are documented in Dante's Purgatorio but whom Shea has taken considerable poetic license with.
Many of the battles portrayed in the novel, such as the battle between the Mamelukes and Saracens outside Cairo and the slaughter of Baghdad, as well as Charles's invasion of Sicily, are closely modeled on the real battles that took place at the time.
[edit] Major themes
Ostensibly an adventure tale, the novel is also a thinly veiled look into secret societies such as the Hashishin and the Templar Knights. These are subjects which Shea has tackled in many books, most famously his Illuminatus! Trilogy, co-written with Robert Anton Wilson. While many of Shea's books after Illuminatus!, such as Shike and All Things Are Lights, deal with the secret societies he clearly had interest in, few of his other books interweave his scholary investigations into these societies into as compelling a story.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Basically ignored during its publication, the novel is out of print today. Its staff and fan reviews on most websites are very strong and has attracted a cult following, and the novels are relatively easy to find in the second-hand market.
[edit] External links
Robert Shea's official site, which includes a Creative Commons-licensed copy of The Saracen's prequel, All Things Are Lights.
