What about Frederick II "Stupor Mundi", the Holy Roman Emperor? I believe that he was a declared atheist, but the people loved him. Of course, he was also excomunicated twice and the pope Gregory IX called him "the Antichrist"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II,_Holy_Roman_Empero r

Yeah, but I believe he was actually over-religious, to the point of believing he was the true Messiah.

According to Wikipedia,

Frederick II was a religious sceptic. He is said to have denounced Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as all being frauds and deceivers of mankind. He delighted in uttering blasphemies and making mocking remarks directed toward Christian sacraments and beliefs. Frederick's religious scepticism was most unusual for the era in which he lived, and to his contemporaries, highly shocking and scandalous. In his period in Jerusalem, this behaviour was much to the dislike of the Muslims too, who grew mistrustful of a Christian which was not a Christian.

Besides his great tolerance (which, however, did not apply to Christian heretics), he had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning. To the horror of his contemporaries, he simply did not believe things that could not be explained by reason. So he forbade trials by ordeal on the firm conviction that in a duel the stronger would always win, whether he was guilty or not. Also, it can be forgotten amidst the general enthusiasm over his book on falconry releases frequently that he also wrote a scientific book about birds or that many of his laws continue to affect life down to the present day, such as the prohibition on physicians acting as their own pharmacists. This was a blow at the charlatanism under which physicians diagnosed dubious maladies and also at the same time in order to sell a useless, even dangerous "cure".

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What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon Bonaparte

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.- Mohandas Gandhi

Ladislaus IV. of Hungary the Cuman (1262-1290). Actually he wasn't an atheist, but he didn't venerate the Church and usually spent his time amongs his Cuman subjects.

Once he attacked a monastery in order to free his sister who was a nun there, but she prefered his Bohemian lover to Jesus.

He even threten the Pope to ally Hungary to the Mongols and destroy Rome itself.

In 1288 Pope Nicholas IV. even ordered a crusade against him, but he was murdered in 1289.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladislaus_IV_of_Hungary - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladislaus_IV_of_Hungary

The court of Ladislaus the Cuman a lithography of the painting of Soma Orlai Petrics:

i checked the link and its not giving any more info .

so its not clear what S.P. Scott's Moorish Empire in Europe (3 vols. 1904) has to show that Abdulrahman was an infidel

anyway from Britannica,

The consolidation of power brought great prosperity to Muslim Spain—one indication of which was his building of a mint where pure gold and silver coins were struck. ʿAbd al-Raḥmân was alsoa great builder; he renovated and added considerably to the Great Mosque at Córdoba and to the royal palace. At vast expense he built a new royal city, Madînat al-Zahrâʾ, to house his household and government. He kept a very strict control over the affairs of state and his civil service, changing his governors frequently to avoid the growth of local dynasties. In 949 he executed his own son for conspiring against him.

Christian and Jewish communities flourished during ʿAbd al-Raḥmân's tolerant reign. His fame spread so far beyond his domains that Córdoba by the end of his reign enjoyed almost as much fame as Constantinople in the Mediterranean world. In Córdoba he received emissaries from such distant rulers as Otto I of Germany and the Byzantine emperor. Córdoba was said to have contained 3,000 mosques and more than 100,000 shops and houses. His reign, the second longest of any Muslim caliph, afforded his wise and courageous policies the fullest chance of development.

doesnt look like he was an infidel, building mosques and stuff.

Mehmed II is a big hero of the Islamists in Turkey. In fact, although he wasn't an atheist (I doubt anyone was before the enlightenment), he wasn't that religious. Some think he was a Christian or considered converting to Christianisy in return for the right to the Roman throne. I personally think he was a Muslim, but an before that an ambitious ruler with a vision of empire, and would have changed his religion if he thought that move would benefit him.

I'll literally translate a few couplets by him [my comments in brackets]:

One who sees Galata [a district of Istanbul where Christians lived], won't care about the highest Paradise [blasphemy!]

One who sees that lovable cypress [common metaphor for a tall and graceful person], won't care about the cypress itself

One who drinks the clear wine she drinks [I am assuming he is writing about a woman since it could be a man as well, Sultans would f**k both sexes], won't talk about Kevser [this is the name of a holy pond, and its super holy water, in paradise according to Quran. As we can see, he practically says wine is better than holy water from paradise]

One who sees the church she goes to, won't go to the mosque ever again. [quite clear]

Tsk tsk that doesn't sound very Islamic to me.  No wonder his poems not as popular as Suleyman's.