MUSLIM SICILY - CHRONICLE OF A SLOW MEDIEVAL CONQUEST

Written by Giuditta Andrei

If the Mediterranean Sea could speak it would tell us the ancient memories of those who have crossed it; memories of travellers, pilgrims, inventors, poets, philosophers and skilful conquerors who have marked the entire course of European history. Surely the Mediterranean would tell us about Sicily.

The prosperity of this island surpasses all description. Suffice it to say that it is the daughter of Spain by the extent of its cultivation, the lushness of its crops and its prosperity, having an abundance of various products, and fruits of every kind and species. With charming words Ibn Jubayr (1145-1217 C.E.), the well-known Andalusian traveller on his way back from his pilgrimage to Mecca, described Sicily in 1185 C.E.

Almost 1200 years have passed since the Muslim army landed on the southern coast of Sicily. Since then, the influences that this conquest has introduced into the regional territory have been many. We can affirm, first of all, that nothing has ever hindered this island from historically experiencing the entire history of the Mediterranean in its smallest details. Numerous peoples as ethnically and culturally variegated as the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans, to name but a few, colonised, built, exalted with arms and praised with words Sicily. that this conquest has introduced into the regional territory have been many. 

What united more than all these individual peoples over time, was the strategic position that Southern Italy has assumed over the centuries as a meeting point for philosophers, inventors, travellers, poets and conquerors, consolidating in Sicily, in particular, a cradle for multicultural coexistence, a cradle that has contributed to the progress of the whole of Europe.

THE ADVANCE TOWARDS THE WEST

Although Sicily has absorbed the cultural, linguistic and architectural influences of every single conquest it has passed through, the Arab influence has left a deeper imprint than the others, which is still perceptible today. Before arriving at an understanding of the dynamics that favoured the Arab-Muslim advance in Sicily, we must first consider the historical background that ran through North Africa shortly before the conquest.

After the death of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (570-632 C.E.) in Medina, the succession of Islamic Conquests of the surrounding lands started its course victoriously throughout the 7th and 8th century. The Muslims achieved enormous success by conquering much of the territory around the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia, pushing as far west as Spain and Portugal and as far east as the Indus river valley. The Muslim armies began their invasion from the provinces of Iraq and Syria, before moving eastwards into the Iranian plateau and westwards into Egypt.

In essence, the extension of the conquered Muslim possessions in North Africa followed the ancient Roman administrative division from East to West:

• The Misr (the romanized Arabic name for Egypt)
• The province of Ifriqiya (located between Tunisia and Libya, what the Romans called Africa Proconsularis)
• Magrib al-Aqsa (literally 'The Farthest West', present-day Morocco)
• Al-Andalus (or Islamic Spain)

According to historical chronicles reported by Arab authors, the inherited image of Byzantine Sicily before the Arab invasion, was characterised by the presence of private imperial and ecclesiastical residences (Latifundia); an island where Christian churches had replaced sacred sites and ancient pagan sanctuaries, an island whose sparsely inhabited and demographically declining cities retained classical architectural elements throughout.

Before the Arab presence became at least predominant in Southern Italy, there were several attacks and repeated raids on the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. According to the Annales Regni Francorum, a work describing the actions of the Frankish kings from 741 to 829 C.E. the seas of Sicily were considered to be quite dangerous and vulnerable to external assaults. In this regard, it was recorded that sixty Greek monks were captured by the Moors from Al-Andalus on the island of Pantelleria, an island located in the Strait of Sicily, used by the Byzantine government as a place of exile.

A view of the island of Pantelleria

WHEN THE ARABS ARRIVED

A slow conquest was that of Sicily by the Arabs. 

According to historical sources, the Aghlabids, an autonomous Muslim dynasty within the powerful Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, who ruled Ifriqiya, were the ones under whom the Islamic conquest of the island began.

The Aghlabid Emirate began in 800 and ended in 909 C.E.

Many historians agree that paving the way for this invasion was a Sicilian commander named Euphemios, a patrician of the Christian faith who was hostile to the Byzantine fleet. He, having the objective of making Sicily independent from Byzantium, approached the Aghlabid emir of Qayrawan, the Aghlabid capital, Ziyadat Allah I (788-838 A.D.) to carry out a landing in Sicily.

In mid-June of the year 827 A.D., the Muslim army of 10,000 infantrymen and a fleet of 70 ships left Sousse on the Emir's orders. The Muslim army led by Asab Ibn al-Furat (759-828 A.D.), a well-known jurist with outstanding military skills, appointed in 818 A.D. Qadi of Qayrawan, reached the southern coast of Sicily and landed, perhaps due to the ease of the sea connection with Ifriqiya, at Mazara del Vallo.

The historic centre of Mazara del Vallo

Once there, the route of the troops continued probably following the ancient Roman road through the Val di Noto, and they headed towards the city of Syracuse with the intention of besieging it. However Syracuse was met by a prompt defensive reaction from its inhabitants and a fleet of allied ships that came to help from Constantinople and Venice. According to the chronicles, the Muslims set fire to the opposing ships and managed to settle in a fortress near Mineo, a small town in the province of Catania, from where they undertook subsequent expeditions against Agrigento and Enna (modern Castrogiovanni).

The decisive moment that gave a turning point to the general stalemate of guerrilla warfare, was the arrival of a further fleet of ships from Al-Andalus, already strongly present in Sicily in the first years of the conquest, that came to support the Aghlabid army. In 830 C.E. with the addition of the Andalusian forces, the troops advanced towards Palermo, organising assaults by land and sea, and the city nevertheless managed to resist Arab pressure for another year. This is how the influential Arab historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 C.E.) recounted the siege of Palermo:

The Muslims then went against the city of Palermo and laid siege to it. The prince (sahib) then asked for salvation for himself, his people and his possessions, and having obtained it, he left by sea to the land of rum. The Muslims entered the city in the month of Ragab in the year 216 (August-September 831 C.E.) and found there nothing but three thousand men, whereas there had been seventy thousand during the siege and all had died. Disagreements and disputes took place between the Muslims of Ifriqiya and those of Al-Andalus, but they later came to an agreement and remained so until the year 219 (16 January 834 to January 835 C.E.)

Between 831 and 834 C.E. Palermo was officially named the political capital of Sicily by the new conquerors. From the beginning the Arabs introduced a new coinage bearing the inscription al-Madina (Palermo's official name, i.e. “The City”) Siqiliyya or Madina Balarm.

Arab domination continued its expansion, initially focusing on easy raids in the surrounding territories, until it spread like wildfire across the entire island. Between 836 and 849 C.E. Messina, Modica, Lentini and Ragusa fell under the Muslim yoke, while the main outposts of Taormina, Catania and Syracuse retained, for a short time yet, their Byzantine affiliation. The presence of both Arabs and Berbers, was more significantly consolidated in Val di Mazara, Girgenti and Val di Noto, where the territories were now subject to the payment of taxes by the emirs (jizya).

A MULTI-ETHNIC COEXISTENCE

From historical sources and today's genetic mapping, we know that the Mediterranean shores stretching between Sicily, Southern Italy and the Southern Balkans have long been the scene of migratory processes, intense trade and the resulting ethnic and cultural heterogeneity from the earliest times. That said, how was society structured under Arab rule? And how did Arabs influence Sicily?

Well, as much as one might think that conviviality and tolerance between Christian and Muslim believers was a distant utopia, in reality, Sicily under Arab rule was precisely the place where the two faiths met.

Sicily under Aghlabid rule had a more than heterogeneous population in terms of both religion and ethnicity; it was home to Christians, Jews and Muslims, Arabs, Berbers, Greeks, Lombards, Persians and Africans. Sicilian society enjoyed considerable religious tolerance; Christians in general, constituted the majority on the island and the population as a whole could be divided into four categories:

• Those who remained more or less religiously independent
• Those who paid tribute
• The vassals
• The slaves

People of the Christian faith who lived in the areas directly administered by the Muslims were referred to as Dhimmis and enjoyed obligations and privileges that applied equally in other territories under Islamic law at that time. Muslims guaranteed Christian worshippers security over their individual property and protected their freedom of worship, but they were in no way allowed to judge Islam and its Prophet.

Christian slaves were divided into three categories: those who had been taken prisoner as a result of wars, those who had been sold and labourers farmers; the latter readily accepted to convert to Islam in the hope of improving their treatment and social status. Personal disputes between two groups of Christians were subject to their own law, but if one subject of both was a Muslim, Islamic law was applied as the final resolution.

GREEN REVOLUTION

The impact of Arab rule in medieval Sicily was not limited in its influence, as it spread its identity on a large scale, starting first of all in the governmental and administrative field. The salacious taxation previously imposed by the Byzantines was modified according to new criteria. The Islamic-government departments established the municipal bodies as those in North Africa, namely the jama'ah, a group of people mostly from noble families, jurists, wealthy citizens who contributed economically to community services, financing the construction or improvement of aqueducts, wells, mosques or helping destitute travellers.

But more than others, the sectors that saw vast improvement and radical transformation were agriculture-hydraulics, mining and trade. As had already occurred in contemporary Al-Andalus, a veritable “Green Revolution” took place in medieval Sicily, i.e. the process that saw both the introduction of new agricultural techniques through the use of new technologies, as well as the cultivation of new crops.

The Arabs, innovators in the field of agriculture, introduced sophisticated irrigation systems, channelling water from rivers and springs into new canals and water wheels built specifically to cross entire countryside and irrigate cultivated fields. The innovative irrigation methods inherited from the Persian Civilisation, introduced in Sicily, revolutionised the entire agricultural and urban sector.

A truly diversified agriculture flourished that included rice, cotton, linen, oranges, lemons and other citrus trees in abundance. They also introduced to Europe the cultivation of sugar cane, mulberry trees, silkworms, the papyrus plant that was used to produce high-quality paper rolls for administrative use, as well as dates, pistachios, olives, vines, bananas, peaches, almonds and pomegranates. Merchants from both Africa and the East and from neighbouring Christian cities gathered here.

At that time, as in any Islamic city where markets abounded, one could meet flour merchants, money changers, apothecaries, spice sellers, potters, bakers, perfumers, tanners and carpenters on the streets. Other goods that marked this diversified trade were the importation of aloe vera, plants for medicinal purposes, amber, henna for colouring, kohl, pearls, rose oil, soaps, perfumes, but also textiles both coarse and fine. During this period, trade between Egypt and the main Southern Italian coasts such as Naples and Amalfi was more intense than ever; the international market saw an enormous rise, wealth and prosperity spread unstoppably.

Another factor of enrichment favoured by the Arab occupation was the mining industry, largely concentrated in the deposits of the Etna region. In these deposits, gold and silver were mined, metals that were fundamental for the bimetallic monetary economy and for architectural decorations, but mercury, lead, sulphide, aluminium and ammonium salt were also extracted.

URBAN AND INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS

According to historical sources, old Muslim Sicily boasted more than 300 fortresses on the island and several strategic fortified points as emergency shelters for villagers in case of war. Palermo, the capital, had a population of 300,000 and was one of the most heavily fortified cities. Surrounded by a wall and a trench, the entire city was divided into five sections or quarters (harat):

• The elitè section: one of these called the qasr (fortress) from the Latin Castrum, located in old Palermo, flanked by towers, where the city's merchants and nobles lived.
• Another historical quarter was the khalisa, the area where the Emir and his servants had their residences, public offices, prisons and arsenals.
• The most densely populated, large but unfortified district was harat as-Saqaliba, or the Slavic quarter.
• The other two sections of the city were harat al-jadida (the new quarter), which housed various trades and was inhabited by soldiers, grain merchants, seamstresses and blacksmiths.Then there was the main mosque quarter and smaller quarters such as the Jewish quarter.

A Qur'anic inscription on an external column of Palermo Cathedral dating back to the Arab-Norman domination of Sicily

Under Muslim rule, the expression of some mosques as schools was also a flourishing learning and literary reality in Sicily. Throughout the well-known Golden Age of Islam, mosques were not only a place where the faithful addressed God with their prayers, but very often also centres of study. Frequently next to the mosques were madrasas, veritable centres of learning, where, in addition to the Qur'an and religious sciences such as fiqh (jurisprudence), hadith (prophetic traditions) and qira'at (recitation of the Qur'an), the natural sciences, grammatical and intellectual subjects were taught. Classes usually took place in a courtyard and consisted mainly of textbook memorisation; lessons were free, as was food, accommodation and medical care. Ibn Awqal (943-988) himself, a well-known Muslim geographer and traveller, stated in his work Book of Routes and Kingdoms: “Palermo had a large number of mosques never found in any other Islamic city”, as for example in contemporary Cordoba or Granada.

In the course of Arab-Islamic history, many Caliphs and Emirs distinguished themselves as patrons of literature and the sciences, financing the translation and cataloguing of ancient manuscripts and surrounding themselves at court with doctors, writers, interpreters and poets.

During the XII and XIII centuries C.E. Sicily could be defined as second to the intellectual centres existing in the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily certainly never equalled Andalusia in terms of the quantity of translated texts, but it certainly made its contribution as a pole in education, gradually influencing stagnant European thought. Sicily was distinguished from the whole of Latin Europe by intellectual exchange, the transmission of ideas and Latin-Greek-Arabic multilingualism. In the early Middle Ages, Southern Italy played a key role in laying the foundations on which subsequent academic advances would be built, stimulating a fervent interest in science, literature and the arts.

Around the year 1000 C.E., an important Arab school of poetry came into being, which for almost three centuries left traces of a rich production of manuscripts from Andalusia and North Africa, demonstrating a profound interweaving of cultures and expressiveness. The expression of poetry in Sicily both during the Muslim presence and later the gradual conquest by the Normans, was a very popular component that dealt with various typical themes such as the panegyric dedicated to the powerful of the courts, the funerary elegy, the often recurring love theme, the attachment and nostalgia of the homeland, referring especially to the countries of the East, North Africa and Sicily’s locations, which the Muslims gradually abandoned.

The Church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti in Palermo with typical Arab-Islamic inspired architecture. Commissioned by the Norman King Roger II (1132)

Ibn Hamdis (1065-1133 C.E.) an Arab poet born in Noto, went into exile first to Seville, then to Morocco and Tunisia and finally to Majorca, where he died. Recurring themes such as regret and the poignant nostalgia for the abandoned land are addressed in his poetry, as an excerpt from his poem I Remember Sicily mentions:

I remember Sicily, and grief stirs the memory of it in my soul.

A place of youthful follies now deserted, once animated

by the flower of noble wits.

I have been banished from a paradise, how can I give news of it?

Were it not the bitterness of tears, I would believe them

the rivers of that paradise.

O God keep a house in Noto, and flow over her

the swollen clouds!

Every hour I picture them in my thoughts, and pour for her

drops of flowing tears.

With filial longing I yearn for my homeland, towards which I am drawn

the dwellings of her beautiful women.

And he who has left his heart as a vestige of a dwelling, to that

yearns in his heart to return.

When Palermo fell definitively in 1072 C.E. and Noto was the last Muslim stronghold to capitulate in 1089, although the Arab presence slowly ceased year after year, a certain period of splendour continued to pervade the Norman Court, a period in which ethnicities, languages, religions coexisted as cosmopolitans, marking and ennobling the history of Sicily once again.

Bibliography:

The Muslims of Medieval Italy – Alex Metcolfe

La Sicilia Musulmana – Alessandro Vanoli

The Travels – Ibn Jubayr

A History of Islamic Sicily – Aziz Ahmad

Book of Routes and Kingdoms – Ibn Hawqal

Annales Regni Francorum