The mid-thirteenth century Crusader states operated under sustained Mamluk ("Egyptian") military pressure, with successive Templar fortresses falling between 1265 and 1271. Against this background of territorial contraction, a Latin notarial source records a sworn blood-brotherhood between a Templar preceptor and the Mamluk sultan. What does this evidence tell us of that relationship and its function within the broader framework of Mamluk-Frankish diplomacy?
Baibars (alMalik alẒāhir Rukn alDīn Baibars alBunduqdārī, r. 1260 to 1277) was the founding sultan of the Bahri Mamluk dynasty. Of Kipchak Turkic origin, he attained military prominence at alManṣūra (1250) during the Seventh Crusade and formally assumed the sultanate following the assassination of Qutuz in 1260.[1] According to both modern and medieval Muslim historians such as al-Maqrizi, Baibars was involved in this assassination.
The Templar commander Matthew Sauvage held the preceptory of Sidon which the Order had acquired by foreclosure on the debts of Julian of Sidon in 1260.[2]. The city's walls had been damaged in the 1260 Mongol sack and resources were insufficient for full repair.[3] At the same time there was a hostile climate of wholesale Mamluk refusal to engage diplomatically with the Franks.
So the Sauvage–Baibars personal bond becomes historiographically significant: it appears to represent an individual relationship that transcended the official impasse of the time. The two men most probably met for the first time in 1261, when Sauvage was temporarily held as a Mamluk prisoner of war, witing for ransom. After his release contemporary sources record multiple personal visits in both directions between 1261 and 1278, the relationship being employed to negotiate local agreements and truces between the parties.[4]
Nevertheless, Baibars reduced Frankish presence across this period. His reign saw the systematic destruction of Templar strongholds:
Caesarea (1265), Safed (1266), Beaufort and Sidon (1268), and Crac des Chevaliers
(1271) [5]. Yet when Sidon fell the Templars were permitted a negotiated withdrawal, an outcome scholars associate with the existing personal relationship between the Preceptor and the Sultan.[4] After the fall of Crac des Chevaliers a ten-year truce was concluded in 1272. This stabilised the coastal frontier from Acre to Sidon, providing the peaceful conditions within which the friendship was formalised in a blood-brotherhood.[6]
This relationship is documented in a notarial record produced by Antonio Sici di Vercelli, an Italian notary then in legal service to the Templars. He attested [4] that Commander Sauvage was
"the brother of the Sultan of Babylon [i.e., Cairo] who was then reigning, because each had drunk from the blood of the other in turns, wherefore they were called brothers."
The ritual described, namely mutual ingestion of blood, was a recognised form of sworn fraternity with deep roots in Turkic and steppe cultures, and carried concrete social and legal force in the Mamluk court. Its documentation in formal Latin notarial language signals that it was accorded equivalent standing on the Frankish side as well.
This personal bond operated within a wider diplomatic context. Study of Mamluk treaty practice demonstrates that Baibars conducted an active and sophisticated diplomacy alongside his military campaigns, negotiating formal truces with the Hospitallers, the Templars as an institution, and the rulers of Tripoli, Lesser Armenia, Byzantium, and Genoa.[6] The Sauvage relationship represents an informal channel running parallel to these official instruments, and strategically congruent with them. Facing constant Mongol pressure from the Ilkhanate to the north and east, Baibars had strong geopolitical incentives to maintain stability on his Frankish frontier through personal networks as much as formal agreements.[6]
The bloodbrotherhood between Sauvage and Baibars constitutes documented evidence of a personal diplomatic channel operating alongside formal Mamluk-Frankish treaty relations. The relationship appears to have been functionally effective: multiple mutual visits and locally negotiated agreements are attested over approximately two decades. The institutional response of the Templar leadership to this arrangement is not recorded in surviving sources.
This blog is original work by TemplarsNow based on an AI-assisted quickscan on the topic. References and further reading, all links verified May 22, 2026: [1]. Thorau, P., The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, trans. P. M. Holt (London: Longman, 1992); [2]. Runciman, S., A History of the Crusades, vol. III (Cambridge: CUP, 1954), p. 574; [3]. Julian Grenier (Wikipedia), on the Mongol sack of Sidon (1260) and sale to the Templars; [4]. Burgtorf, J., 'Blood-Brothers in the Thirteenth-Century Latin East?', in Burgtorf, Crawford and Nicholson (eds.), The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307 to 1314) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 3 ff.; [5]. Thomas Bérard (Wikipedia, citing Addison 1842, The history of the Knights Templars : the temple church, and the temple; [6]. Holt, P. M., Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260 to 1290 (Leiden: Brill, 1995; repr. 2021). The illustration shows a probable near-contemporary depiction of Sultan Baibars (Médaillon IV), engraved on the Baptistère de Saint Louis, c. 1320–1340. Mamluk metalwork by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn. Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. LP 16). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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