Renaissance Emir: A Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici by T. J. Gorton (review)

For a few decades in the early seventeenth century, the Druze warlord Fakhr ad-Din (1572–1635) ruled a sizable portion of today's Lebanon and Syria, forging his own trade agreements with the West under the nose of the Ottoman Empire. In 1613, threatened by the sultan, he used his agreements with the Grand Duke of Tuscany as a pretext to set sail for Livorno, where he began an exile that eventually lasted five years, split between the courts of the Medici in Florence and of the Spanish viceroy in Naples. In 1618 he returned home, with unprecedented knowledge of Western ways, as one of the more remarkable figures to bridge the gap between Islamic East and Christian West. Praising Italy as a model of efficiency, he then challenged the sultan's self-image as a beneficent ruler. A remarkable story, well told, but the moral is disheartening. For his independence of mind, Fakhr ad-Din was assassinated in 1635.