Bilal's presence in Rome was a tightly guarded secret, but in the 11th century, gold always talks.
Ibn Fadlan, a wealthy, highly connected Muslim merchant from the Kalbid Emirate of Sicily, was in Rome negotiating timber contracts. Through bribing a dungeon guard, he learned that the legendary "Emir of the North"—the giant Muslim scholar who had treated Arab traders like kings—was being tortured in the Papal cellars.
Ibn Fadlan did not go to the dungeons. He went straight to the Palace of the Tusculani.
He requested an audience with the Cardinal. Ibn Fadlan was escorted into a lavish marble room.
"I know who you have in the dark, Your Eminence," Ibn Fadlan said smoothly in Arabic, translated by a Greek slave. "The Giant of the Ice. I offer a ransom. Fifty pounds of pure African gold, and ten bolts of Byzantine silk. Give him to me."
The Cardinal smiled, a cruel, arrogant smirk.
Let us look at the brutal reality of 1028 AD: The Christian Romans despised the Muslims (Saracens), viewing them as barbaric infidels occupying their ancestral lands in Sicily and Spain.
"You think you can buy a weapon of mass destruction like a common horse, Saracen?" the Cardinal mocked. "The Giant possesses the secrets of the ancients. He is property of the Holy Father. Keep your gold. And leave Rome before I decide to put you in the cell next to him."
The Cardinal spat on the marble floor near the merchant's boots. It was a calculated, profound insult.
Ibn Fadlan did not flinch. He was a businessman, but he was also a proud representative of a global superpower. He looked at the spit on the floor, then up at the Cardinal.
"You are arrogant, Priest," Ibn Fadlan said, his voice dropping all pretense of diplomacy. "You torture a man who fed the poor and cured the sick, just to steal his fire. You refuse the gold of the Emirate. You spit on an envoy of the faithful."
Ibn Fadlan turned to leave, but he stopped at the door.
"I will leave your rotting city," the merchant warned. "I will sail back to Palermo. I will send letters to the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo and the Abbasids in Baghdad. I will tell them that Rome holds the Brother of the North hostage and tortures him for his knowledge. You think you hold a prisoner, Cardinal? You are holding a spark. And when the fleets of Sicily and Egypt sail into your ports to avenge this insult, you will wish you had taken the gold."
The Cardinal's face paled. He realized too late that by insulting the merchant, he had escalated the situation from a private interrogation into a massive international diplomatic crisis.