Willem from Tripoli was a Dominican monk and author of Tractatus de Statu Saracenorum (1273). He pleaded for converting Muslims to Christianity instead of fighting Islam by violence. Life

Willem from Tripoli was born in Tripoli before 1220 and died after 1273. He is a Dominican monk in Akko. He is already missing a list of monks of the monastery in 1280, so he can be presumed to die for it. There is little known about his life.

Marco Polo describes in his memoir that he was accompanied by two Dominican monks, one of them Willem from Tripoli, who had a message from the Pope to the Great Kahn of the Mongols while traveling east. However, at the city of Aizzo in Armenia, the monks turned right because of an invasion of Mongol people. Recent research strongly doubts the reliability of the writings in question by Marco Polo. Work

William of Tripoli wrote his tract on the Saracens (Tractatus de Statu Saracenorum) in 1273. In view of the date, it may have been a response to Pope Gregor X's request in March 1273 to provide information about the "unbelievers" and what dangers they could mean Christianity. A purpose of the writing could have been Lyon's second conciliation, which took place in 1274. There are four manuscripts handed over, three in Latin, one in Old French. The complete text is published in H. Prutz, Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzüge (Berlin 1883) 573 - 598.

The tract contains extensive descriptions of the uses of Muslims. Because of his knowledge of Arabic and his familiarity with the area, Willem from Tripoli was able to gather much information about Islam. His judgment about the Muslims was predominantly positive. He found that Islam knew many similarities with Christianity, and therefore preferred converting to fighting Muslims. According to Willem, Islam was interwoven with "lies" and "fiction," but was not far from the path of Christianity. By himself, he converted 1000 Muslims. Thinkers like Robert Bacon and Thomas van Aquino shared this thought with him. Literature

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