Indeed. Siculo-Arabic was once spoken all across Sicily too. After all it means Sicilian Arabic. To this day the Sicilian language has a lot of words of Arabic origin. Most people in Sicily take pride in their Arab past. I don't know about the Maltese.
Siculo-Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Today, at least in the media, anything Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern is seen in a bad light so it does not surprise me if some simpletons would deny it. Not long ago it would be fashionable for them to propagandize this connection with Arabic.
Most in Spain and Portugal (Al-Andalus where we and Berbers (Moors) had a presence for 800 years and influenced every corner of the Spanish language, culture, cuisine, architecture, music, mixed with locals etc.) also have come to terms with their past. I mean around 10 World UNESCO Heritage Sites in Spain were built/renovated etc. by Moors. The most famous being Alhambra in Granada which is one of the most visited historical sites of Spain.
Part 1 of 4:
(in Spanish with English speak over and Arabic subtitles)
Arabic influences in Sicily
The effects of the Arab presence in Sicily are so evident and important - in the landscape, urban layouts, architecture, art, technological achievements and all brunches of culture - that any attempt to list them would be in vain.
Short historic outline
The Arabs conquered Sicily from 827 to 965. In 827 the Arabic army lands at Mazara del Vallo. With the conquest of Syracuse in 878 the Arabs became masters of great part of Sicily. Finally, in 965 Rometta, the last fortress of the Byzantines falls. The Arab replaced the Greek language and Islamism replaced Christianity. The cities that surrendered without fighting were put under protection: The inhabitants of those cities could keep on practicing the Christian religion but they could not build new churches and they could not make processions. The sword of the Islam dominated from Palermo, the new capital, which was called Balarm by the Arabs. The inhabitants of Palermo increased to 300.000 and the city was full of temples and gardens.
The city of Rometta
Lions and stars
Numerous proofs of the influence of Islamic art on Norman Christian architecture and inner church decoration can be seen in Palermo. Many churches in Palermo, as for instance Santa Maria degli Eremiti or San Cataldo have cupolas that give them an oriental look. The first of those two churches was built on the remains of a mosque. This is not at all surprising as such a phenomenon can be seen in most southern countries, the most famous example being, of course, the cathedral of Cordoba in Spain built inside the former great mosque – a stunning case of architectural forms melting together.
Moorish influences can be recognized in the general conception and outlines of the Norman buildings, which use cubic Arabic forms. But more striking is maybe the Islamic touch of inner details: the lion sculptures from the fountain in the inner courtyard of Palazzo dei Normanni wouldn’t be out of place in the Alhambra in Granada. In the famous roman cloister of Monreale, there is also a fountain, like in many Christian monasteries of the Middle Ages; but in its centre you can see a palm tree pillar which testimonies of north African influences. The columns too look as those from Egyptian palaces from the pharaonic times, though they are much slimmer and elegant.
You have to remember, of course, that Islamic artists never represent the human person – for religious reasons. So they have developed beautiful geometrical and floral decorations. If you look attentively at the inner decoration in Cappela Palatina in Palermo or in the Cathedral of Monreale, you will notice that it seems composed of two very different parts: the lower part is clearly inspired by Islamic art and uses geometrical forms in stunning colour combinations; on the other hand, in the upper parts of the buildings, the Norman artists have used all the magnificence of Byzantine mosaics to represent scenes from the Bible. One could add that in the Duomo of Monreale, the abbes has a window decorated with moons and stars as you could find them in Arab palaces.
So Norman architecture seems quite a perfect mixture of both worlds as was, in Spain, the Mozarab tradition. So it is difficult not to think about what historian and sociologist Bernard Lewis said about relations between Islam and Europe in the Middle Ages: that the people from Christian states were very curious and eager to learn from the Moors whereas the Arabs in these times used to consider European people as barbarians.
Palazzo dei Normanni
Orlando and friends
From the French Chanson de geste to puppet shows in Palermo. You might think there is no connexion at all between puppets and French knights from the Middle Age: but you would be wrong ! The stories and characters used in the Sicilian puppet theatre are inspired by the adventures of Charles the Great and his knights. Like the Chanson de Geste - epic poems from the Middle Age narrating the deeds of the French knights - the puppet theatre is an oral form of literature: the pupparo (that is to say the puppeteer) invents the words the characters will say while acting the play. The Sicilian puppet theatre stories are not directly adapted from the 'Chanson de Roland'; they are rather inspired by Italian poems and narratives from the end of the Middle Age and beginnings of the Renaissance: texts by Torquato Tasso and Ariosto ('Orlando furioso').
Just to give you an idea of what it is all about here is a short summing up of the play we could see when in Palermo. The story was about Milone, a French knight from whom I had never heard before and who doesn’t really occur in the 'Chanson de Roland': according to the pupparo, Milone is the father of Roland.
Banned by Charles the Great, Milone decides to flee to North Africa where he offers his services to a Moorish king, helping him by his exceptional courage, to defeat his enemies. But Milone did not tell the King who he really was; he presented himself as a knight errant; so he appears as a romantic character in the manner of Ivanhoe or 'el desdichado' from Nerval’s poem 'Je suis le veuf, l'inconsolé, le chevalier d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie...'). Unfortunately, one day, Milone's real identity gets revealed; discovering that he is a Christian knight, the moors decide to put him to death.
Let’s say these are stories about the eternal fight between good and bad. So fighting episodes are numerous and in some way, these plays are quite violent. The French students from about 12 to 16 years of age that also attended the puppet theatre that day particularly applauded the fighting scenes. They identified very easily with the hero representing the good. This I found really interesting, because it means that - unlike the 'Chanson de Roland' who was written as a type of propaganda for the crusades – these stories are purely symbolic: characters are to be understood as representations from good and bad rather than as real persons from different cultural or religious communities.
Palermo's Puppet Theatre
Some interesting Arabic influences in Palermo
- Norman Palace: cubic dungeon and Cappela Palatina
- Cathedral and Cloister in Monreale
- Many churches: San Cataldo, Eremiti, chiesa dei Leprosi, Chiesa Maione and cloister...
- Two other palaces from Norman Arab times: la Cuba, where an interesting exhibition about Arab influences in Palermo can be seen, and la Zisa, which has been restored a few years ago and is now the museum of Islamic art of Palermo.
East & west, Sicily is the best
Sicily's strategic position in the Mediterranean has made it a cultural crossroads washed over by successive waves of invaders. On this island, between the 9th and 12th centuries AD, two great civilisations - the Arabs and the Normans - met and mingled laying the basis of the Sicily of today. Palermo, whose very name - from the Arab Balarm - defines its origins. The eminent Arab traveller and explorer Ibn Hawqal described the city, a one - time Arab emirate, in 973 as 'the city of the 300 mosques'. Wherever you look there are signs of the city's heyday as a capital of the Islamic, and consequently Norman kingdoms. Modern Islamic culture occupies a much humbler place in Palermo. The 300 mosques have diminished to but 1 which is housed in a deconsecrated church in Palermo's inner city. The church, San Paolino dei Giardinieri, was badly damaged during and was given to the council by the diocese and is now run by the Tunisian government.
Its a short walk from the Mosque to Palermo's architecturally eclectic Cathedral built in 604 AD as a Christian temple it was given 'facelifts' by both Moors and Normans with the last (disastrous) restoration taking place in the 18th Century. Take a close look at the columns that flank the main entrance. Arab scholars will recognise verses from the Koran. Perhaps the finest example of Arab - Norman art in Sicily is the Capella Palatina in Piazza della Vittoria, a few minutes' walk from the Cathedral. The chapel is a magnificent showcase of Arab - Norman art with its breath - taking Byzantine mosaics rivalled only by those in Istanbul and Ravenna.
Ceiling of the Capella Palatina
Another church well worth a visit is Chiesa di San Giovanni degli Eremiti which was built on the remains of an Arab mosque. From there we then head towards La Zisa,the museum of Islamic art.Of what one was once the vast Genoardo Park, a Norman creation, there now remains a building of extraordinary value, something unique in the entire Mediterranean area, since nothing remains but a few ruins of any comparable palaces in North Africa. The Palace of la Zisa - the name comes from the Arabic Al - aziz (the splendid - meaning noble and magnificent) was originally a sumptuous summer dwelling of the Norman Kings, a place for the court’s leisures and pleasures. Its impressive outward aspect, the refined elegance of its numerous rooms, its location amid a vast park rich in water and with a fishpond at the front –everything conjures up the image of the Koranic Paradise. Work was started on the palace by William I and continued by William II, between 1165 and 1180. Over the centuries it was variously modified –it was fortified in the fifteenth century (hence its customary, though inaccurate appellation of castle) and transformed into the residential abode of the Sandoval family in the seventeenth century. In the main salon, the fountain Room, we can still see how water gushed out of the floor (honeycomb vaults), plus Byzantine Mosaics with hunting scenes above an eagle, surrounded by little corner columns. On the upper floor, the Belvedere Room, which originally was open to the sky, used to have a marble tank to collect rainwater. The interior has been laid out as a museum, with a number of significant items of Islamic origin from various Mediterranean countries, including elegant musciarabia - latticed wooden floors with refined lacework carvings - and everyday objects and ornaments such as chande liers, bowls, basins and mortals with engraved decoration embellished with gold and silver leaf. An extensive public park is in the process of being laid out all around la Zisa in order to preserve the memory of this Paradise Lost.
Mazara del Vallo
Chiesa di San Giovanni degli Eremiti
We now leave the capital and go southwest towards Mazara del Vallo this is where the Moors landed in 827 AD when they first set about their conquest of Sicily. Nowadays the town boasts some 5,000 Tunisians - an impressive 10% of the total population - most of whom live in the Kasbah, the old Arab quarter. The town's Moorish past is still evident in the remains of the original mosque, the streets and courtyards of the San Francesco and Giudecca Quarters, and the domes of two beautiful Arab - Norman churches: Sant'Egidio e del Carmine and San Nicolò Regale (which is known locally as Santa Niculicchia). Walk around and savour the sights, sounds and smells which seem to come straight from the pages of 'Arabian Nights'.
Catania's modern mosque
Our journey now brings us to Catania on the eastern coast of Sicily and into the modern world of Islam. Indeed Catania is home to Italy's first modern mosque, which was opened in 1980 and was shortly followed by the mosques in Milan (1988) and Rome (1995). The mosque, which is dedicated to Khalif Omar, was designed by an Egyptian architect and financed by the Libyan government but a local lawyer Michele Papa who recognised the need of the city’s Arab population promoted the initial idea. It's a pity that the Islamic congregation didn't appreciate the Latin dedication to Papa on the mosque's imposing entrance and chose to relocate to a somewhat shoddier structure close to the port.
Some other cultural traces in Sicily
We can see the Arabic or Islamic traces in the city names of Sicily. For instance, Erice. The name of Erice as We can see in the historical sources changed by Arabs emirates and renamed as Gebel - Hamed, means 'Mohammed’s Mountain' or 'Hameds Mountain', as we know 'Hamd' or 'Hamed' means 'thanks to God'. So it looking to possible to be said that 'Gebel Hamed' means not 'Mohammed’s Mountain' may be it means 'The Grace Mountain'.
Another well-known city in Sicily is Marsala. That word means 'Marsa Ali,' or 'Marsa Allah'. As we know Ali is the name of the son - in law of Prophet Mohammed. That means 'Port of God' or 'Port of Ali'. The other city is Caltanisseta. Caltanissetta's name shares the onomastic Arabic kal, indicating that a Saracen castle protected it. In Himera (or the other its historical name Te rmini) you can see a large stone slab with Arabic inscriptions written upon it, believed to have been suspended over the city gates of Termini during the period of Saracen domination.
Messina, the other name is the ‘The City of Ghosts’. One can see the twelfth - century Norman - Arab style of the Church of the Annunciation of the Catalans (Annunziata dei Catalani), on Via Garibaldi near Via Cesare Battisti, differs from the architecture of the other Norman - Arab churches in Sicily. Its exterior is more Byzantine than those of most of the other churches.
Annunziata dei Catalani
In Monreale we can to see many kind of Arab - Muslim influence. The history of Monreale can be summed up in the name of one man: King William II 'The Good.' The last of the Norman Kings of Sicily was the grandson of the illustrious Roger II. Prior to the construction of Santa Maria la Nuova, it is believed Monreale was a tiny Saracen hamlet named 'Ba'lat,' where local farmers would gather to cart their produce to the market, or 'souk' (in Arab it means street' down in Palermo. That outdoor market still exists to this day and is known as Ballarò. It is possible that Ballarò's name derives from an Arabic phrase meaning 'Ba'lat Market.'
In Segesta on one hill there is a amphitheatre and the other side of theatre there is a mosque and Arab - Style houses foundations.
Ironically, the 9th century Saracen invasion of Sicily brought prosperity to Sciacca. The conquest also brought the town a new name. 'Sciacca' is derived from an Arabic phrase, and although the exact meaning of the term is uncertain, most sources agree that it has something to do with the town's geographical position, possibly meaning 'Rocky Heights' or 'Seaside Cliffs.' Under Arab rule, Sciacca became the principal Sicilian port for the export of Sicilian grain to North Africa, and the town's fishing industry thrived as well. Sciacca was bequeathed by Count Roger I to his daughter, Juliet in 1101. She had Christian churches and monasteries erected in place of the mosques. A bloody feud spawned in Sciacca in 1400 between the Norman Perollo clan and the Catalan Lunas family and lasted for more than a century.
One more interesting monument one can see is La Cuba. A less elaborate version of Zisa, and not as well preserved, 'Cuba' is a Sicilian derivation of the Arabic Ka'aba, meaning 'cube' or 'square - shaped structure.' It has nothing to do with the Caribbean island of the same name. Built in 1180 by King William II, it was a kind of summer palace with royal gardens where the court came to escape the heat. A tall building with a rectangular plan, it is another magnificent piece of Fatimid architecture. The interior of the original structure had a hall that rose the full height of the building and was covered by a dome.
Sicilian music and Arabic influences
Many Sicilian kinds of music such as Serenades, lullabies, love songs, jealousy or prison songs; or just songs - in which the text is just an embroidery 'sewed' on the melody - and dances, like the 'tarantella', but also the 'fasola' and the 'capona', are based on tunes which taste of Arabia; the melodies, often unpredictable, are the result of a richness built on this influence during several centuries. Specifically, the use of quarter tones and other micro - intervals in sicilian melodies reflects a strong arabian influence.
Generally, Arabic music has had the greatest influence on the music formation of the West throughout history. Arabic music influenced this art through both political and intellectual contact. These kinds of contact brought a circle of bright oriental traditions and beliefs to Sicily. The borrowing from Arabic works or Arab teachers along with compilations and translations from Arabic works can trace the literary and intellectual contact of Muslim Sicily with Christian Sicily. This is when the literary contact became the designated driver of the Arabian influence.
Musical instruments were actually derived from the Egyptian civilization and disseminated in Europe mainly through the Arabs. The names of many well - known musical instruments have their linguistic roots in the Arabic language. The origins of the word guitar from the Arabic
qithara, is a well - known fact. Such examples clearly present the solid ties between music now and where it originated in the Arabic culture. The Arabic language was used to name musical instruments because of its deep involvement with the art.Among some important musical instruments of Sicilian folk music which reveal Arabic influence is the Tamburi a cornice: widespread in the whole Mediterranean area they are of different dimensions and can also be made with metal objects incorporated which play by resonance. Among these the oldest is probably the 'Daf', also called 'Myriam's tamburine', played by women and used for dance music, which is identical to the small and medium sized Sicilian tamburine.
Darabouka is a clay drum made in the form of a goblet with fish skin, which is common to all arabic countries and is used in both art and folk repertoires. It is traditionally played also by women. The use of the Darabouka in Sicily has been documented by historical and iconographical sources.
Editor(s): Anne Spicher, Despina Thrapsimi, Mustafa Cevik
Latest revision: 12. September 2008 10:37
Chain - Cultural heritage
Sicilian Peoples: The Arabs
by L. Mendola and V. Salerno
They ruled Sicily for two centuries and a few decades but their influence was nothing short of monumental. Under their administration, the island's population doubled as dozens of towns were founded and cities repopulated. The Arabs changed Sicilian agriculture and cuisine. Their scientific and engineering achievements were remarkable. More significantly, they changed society itself. To this day, many Sicilian social attitudes reflect the profound influence - often in subtle ways - of the Arabs who ruled a thousand years ago but who (with the Greeks and others) are the ancestors of today's Sicilians.
The Arabs, who in medieval times were sometimes called "Saracens" or "Moors," have been identified since antiquity (in Assyrian records dated to circa 850 BC), but until the Middle Ages they were not unified as a people. In the Early Middle Ages, it was Islam that united the Arabs and established the framework of
Islamic law, which may have influenced European legal principles as far away as the Norman Kingdom of England and its common law. Initially, most Muslims were Arabs, and during the Arab rule of Sicily their Islamic faith was closely identified with them. (Even today, many principles believed to be tenets of Islam are, in fact, Arab practices unrelated to Muslim ethics.) The rapid growth of Arab culture could be said to parallel the dissemination of Islam. Except for some poetry, the first major work of literature published entirely in Arabic was the Koran (Quran), the holy book of Islam, and one may loosely define Arabs by the regions where Arabic was spoken in the Middle Ages and afterwards. Arabs were a Semitic people of the Middle East. The
Berbers of northwest Africa and the Sahara were not Arabs although related with Arabs, though many converted to Islam, adopted Arabic as their language and assimilated with Arab society. Though most parts of Sicily were conquered by Arabs, certain areas where settled by people who, strictly speaking, were Muslim Berbers. Like many Berbers, some Arabs were nomadic.
With the emergence of the
Byzantine Empire, groups of Arabs lived in bordering areas in the Arabian peninsula and parts of what are now Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt. Their language, Arabic, is a Semitic tongue of various dialects related to Hebrew and Ethiopic, written in script from right to left.
Muhammad (the Prophet of Islam) was born in Mecca around AD 570 and his religious community at Medina eventually grew to dominate the entire Arabian peninsula. Following Muhammad's death in 632, caliphs (civil and religious leaders) succeeded him. Three families from Muhammad's tribe ruled the expanding Arabian empire for the next many centuries, namely the
Umayyads (661-750), the
Abbasids (750-1517) and the
Alids (
Fatimid dynasty in northern Africa from 909 to 1171). In practice, certain regions - including Sicily - were actually controlled by particular (if minor) families, or often under local emirs (there were several in Sicily when the Normans arrived in 1061).
Initially, the Arabs aspired to little more than some productive land in coastal areas and around the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, but within decades of the Prophet's death their objectives grew greater. With the growth of their society supported by conversions to Islam, the wealth sought by Arabs was precisely that which the Koran (3:14) discouraged: "The passion for women, the desire for male children, the thirst for gold and silver, spirited horses, and the possession of cattle and land, in fact all the pleasures of life on earth." Sicily offered all of these things in abundance.
By 650, the Arabs were making their way through Libya and Tunisia, and what remained of the once-prosperous city of Carthage was destroyed in 698. The
Byzantines had already lost these areas, but they retained control of Sicily - despite numerous raids by Arab pirates - until 827. In that year, Euphemius, a Byzantine admiral and resident governor of Sicily who found himself at odds with the Emperor, offered the governorship of the island to Ziyadat Allah, the Aghlabid Emir of Al Qayrawan (in Tunisia) in exchange for his support. This fiasco resulted in the landing of over ten thousand Arab and Berber troops at Mazara in the western part of Sicily. Euphemius was soon killed and Sicily's Arab period had begun.
Three Arab dynasties ruled Sicily - first the
Aghlabids (a "minor" family based in Tunisia which had broken away from the Abbasids of Baghdad) and then, from 909, the
Fatimids, who entrusted much of their authority to the
Kalbidsin 948. In that year, Hassan al-Kalbi became the first Emir of All Sicily. By 969, the Fatimid dynasty (descended from the Prophet's daughter, Fatima) were moving their geographic center of power to Cairo, leaving their Tunisian capitals (Madiyah and Al Quayrawan) and western territories to the care of what in Europe would be called "vassals."
Islam spread quickly across the Mediterranean but in Sicily the Arabs' conquest was a slow one. Panormos, which was to become the seat of an emirate as
Bal'harm (Palermo) in 948, fell in 832. Messina was taken in 843. Enna (the Arabs'
Kasr' Yanni, also an emirate) was conquered in 858. With the violent fall of Syracuse in 878, the conquest was essentially complete, though Taormina and several other mountaintop communities held out for a few more years.
Byzantine society, culture and government were closely identified with Christianity, and the law was based largely (though not entirely) on Judeo-Christian ideas, but it would have been mistaken to consider the Byzantine state a theocracy. Moreover, as Christianity already existed in many regions (such as Sicily) in the Byzantine Empire, there was not always a need to introduce (or impose) it. Islam, however, was a way of life that could not easily be separated from society itself, and it was a religion formerly unknown in Sicily. This obviously influenced Arab society in Sicily and elsewhere, though efforts were made to retain something of the established order. In the early ninth century, Islam itself could be said to be in its formative stages socially, with certain literary sources (collections of
hadiths containing
sunnahs or "laws") still being written.
Arab administration, if not particularly enlightened, was not very harsh by medieval standards, but it was far from egalitarian. Sicily's Christians and Jews (Sicily was at least half Muslim by 1060) were highly taxed, and clergy could not recite from the Bible or Talmud within earshot of Muslims. Christian and Jewish women (who like Muslim ones were veiled in public) could not share the public baths with Muslim women -many of whom were ex-Christians converted to Islam to contract financially or socially advantageous marriages to Muslim men. Non-Muslims had to stand in the presence of Muslims. New churches and synagogues could not be built, nor Muslims converted to other faiths. A number of large churches, such as the cathedral of Palermo, were converted to mosques. (The Arabic inscription shown above is still visible on one of its columns.)
A degree of religious tolerance prevailed; there were no forced conversions. Yet, a new social order was soon in place. Except for a few merchants and sailors, there had been very few Muslim Arabs in Sicily before 827, but Byzantine legal strictures imposed upon them, and upon the Jews living across the island, cannot be said to have been as rigid as those imposed upon non-Muslims by the Arabs after about 850. At first, however, many Sicilians probably welcomed the prospect of change because they had been overtaxed and over-governed by their Byzantine rulers.
The Arabs introduced superior irrigation systems; some of their underground
qanats (kanats) still flow under Palermo. They established the
Sicilian silk industry, and at the court of the Norman monarch
Roger II great Arab thinkers like the geographer
Abdullah al Idrisi were welcome. Agriculture became more varied and more efficient, with the widespread introduction of rice,
sugar cane, cotton and
oranges. This, in turn, influenced Sicilian cuisine. Many of the most popular Sicilian foods trace their origins to the Arab period.
Dozens of towns were founded or resettled during the Saracen era, and souks (suks, or
street markets) became more common than before. Bal'harm (Palermo) was repopulated and became one of the largest Arab cities after Baghdad and Cordoba (Cordova), and one of the most beautiful. Construction on Bal'harm's al-Khalesa district built near the sea was begun in 937 by Khalid Ibn Ishaq, who was then Governor of Sicily. Despite later estimates of a greater population, there were probably about two hundred thousand residents in and around this city by 1050, and it was the capital of Saracen Sicily. Bal'harm was the official residence of the Governors and Emirs of All Sicily, and al-Khalesa (now the Kalsa district) was its administrative center. As we've mentioned, in 948 the Fatimids granted a degree of autonomy to the Kalbid dynasty, whose last "governor" (effectively a hereditary emir), Hasan II (or Al-Samsan), ruled until 1053. By then, Kasyr Yanni (Enna), Trapani, Taormina and Syracuse were also self-declared, localized "emirates." (This word was sometimes used rather loosely to describe any hereditary ruler of a large locality; in law Sicily had been a unified emirate governed from Palermo since 948, but by the 1050s the others had challenged his authority over them.)
Naturally, Arabic was widely spoken and it was a major influence on Sicilian, which emerged as a Romance (Latin) language during the subsequent (Norman) era. The Sicilian vernacular was in constant evolution, but until the arrival of the Arabs the most popular language in Sicily was a dialect of Greek. Under the Moors Sicily actually became a polyglot community; some localities were more Greek-speaking while others were predominantly Arabic-speaking. Mosques stood alongside churches and synagogues.
Arab Sicily, by 948 governed from Bal'harm with little intervention from Qayrawan (Kairouan), was one of Europe's most prosperous regions --intellectually, artistically and economically. (At the same time, Moorish Spain was comparable to Sicily in these respects, but its prior society had been essentially Visigothic rather than Byzantine.) With the exception of occasional landings in Calabria, the Sicilian Arabs coexisted peacefully with the peoples of the Italian peninsula. These were Lombards (Longobard descendants) and Byzantines in Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia, where Bari was the largest city.
Under the Byzantines' empire, Sicily enjoyed some contact with the East, but as part of a larger Arab empire having greater contact with China and India, Far Eastern developments such as paper (made from cotton or wood), the compass and Arabic numerals (actually Indian) arrived. So did Arab inventions, such as henna - though today's middle-class Sicilian obsession with artficial blondness is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Under the Arabs, Sicily and Spain found themselves highly developed compared to England and Continental northern Europe.
Byzantium hadn't forgotten Sicily, and in 1038
George Maniakes, at the head of an army of Byzantine-Greeks, Normans, Vikings and Lombards, attempted an invasion of Sicily without success. By the 1050s, the Pope, and some Norman knights from this failed adventure, were casting a long glance toward Sicily with an eye to conquest. This desire was later fueled by dissension among the island's Arabs, leading to support by the Emir of Syracuse for the Normans against the emirates of Enna and Palermo. Most of these internal problems developed after the ruling Fatimids moved their capital from Tunisia to Egypt, where they established Cairo (near ancient Memphis).
The Normans conquered Messina in 1061 and reached the
gates of Palermo a decade later, removing from power the local emir, Yusuf Ibn Abdallah, but respecting Arab customs. Their conquest of Arab Sicily was slower than their conquest of Saxon England, which began in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings. Kasr Yanni was still ruled by its emir, Ibn Al-Hawas, who held out for years. His successor, Ibn Hamud, surrendered, and converted to Christianity, only in 1087. Initially, and for over a century, the Normans' Sicilian kingdom was the medieval epitome of multicultural tolerance. By 1200, this was beginning to change. While the Muslim-Arab influence continued well into the Norman era - particularly in art and architecture - it was not to endure. The Normans gradually "Latinized" Sicily, and this social process laid the groundwork for the introduction of Catholicism (as opposed to eastern Orthodoxy). Widespread conversion ensued, and by the 1280s there were few - if any - Muslims in Sicily. Yet, the mass immigration of north-African Arabs (and Berbers) was the greatest Sicilian immigration since that of the ancient
Greeks, leaving today's Sicilians as Saracen as Hellenic.
While Norman government and law in Sicily were essentially European, introducing institutions such as the feudal system, at first they were profoundly influenced by Arab (and even Islamic) practices. Many statutes were universal, but in the earliest Norman period each Sicilian --Muslim, Christian, Jew-- was judged by the laws of his or her own faith.
When did the various Sicilian localities cease to be Arab (or Byzantine Greek)? There was not an immediate change. Following the Norman conquest, complete Latinization, fostered largely by the Roman Church and its liturgy, took the better part of two centuries, and even then there remained pockets of
Byzantine influence in northeastern Sicily's Nebrodi Mountains.
Had the Normans not conquered Sicily, it might have evolved into an essentially Arab society not unlike that which survived in some parts of Spain into the later centuries of the Middle Ages, and the Sicilian vernacular language (as we know it) would have developed later. It is interesting to consider that general functional literacy among Sicilians was higher in 870 under the Arabs and Byzantines than it was in 1870 under the Italians (at about seventeen percent). In certain social respects, nineteenth-century Sicily still seemed very Arab, especially outside the largest cities, well into the early years of the twentieth century.
About the Authors: Luigi Mendola is the History Editor of Best of Sicily and author of several books. Palermo native Vincenzo Salerno, who contributed to this article, has written biographies of several famous Sicilians, including Frederick II and Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
Sicilian Peoples: The Arabs - Best of Sicily Magazine - Moors and Saracens in Sicilian History
They (Spaniards, Portuguese, Sicilians, Maltese) and Arabs can say whatever they like, our common ties in history are well attested.
It is silly though that some Arabs claim those areas as "their own" despite not being natives but well, some Italians also claim areas in the Arab world based on events in the time of the Roman Empire and other Westerners see the Arab world as their doorstep that they can control whenever they feel like be it in Morocco or the Peninsula.
Check this thread out for more.
BBC Documentary - An Arab Islamic History of Europe
