Islamic artisans decorated the eastern side of the Monreale Cathedral with rich geometric patterns
Sicilian Muslims remained citizens of the multi-ethnic County and subsequent
Kingdom of Sicily until they were expelled in the 1240s. Their influence remains in some elements of the
Sicilian language.
Around 700, the island of
Pantelleria was captured by Arabs, and it was only discord among the Arabs that prevented an attempted invasion of Sicily coming next. Instead, trading agreements were arranged with the Byzantines, and Arab merchants were allowed to trade goods at the Sicilian ports. Attacks from Muslim fleets repeated in 703, 728, 729, 730, 731, 733 and 734, the last two meeting with a substantial Byzantine resistance.
The first true conquest expedition was launched in 740: in that year the Muslim prince
Habib, who had participated on the 728 attack, successfully captured
Syracuse. Ready to conquer the whole island, they were however forced to return to
Tunisia by a
Berber revolt. A second attack in 752 aimed only to sack the same city.
In 826
Euphemius, the commander of the Byzantine fleet of Sicily, forced a nun to marry him. Emperor
Michael II caught wind of the matter and ordered that General Constantine end the marriage and cut off Euphemius' nose. Euphemius rose up, killed Constantine and then occupied Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and driven out to
North Africa.
[1] He offered rule of Sicily over to
Ziyadat Allah the
Aghlabid Emir of
Tunisia in return for a place as a general and safety; an
Arab army was sent.
[1]
The latter agreed to conquer Sicily, promising to give it to Euphemius in exchange for a yearly tribute, and entrusted its conquest to the 70-year-old qadi
Asad ibn al-Furat. The Muslim force counted 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 100 ships, reinforced by Euphemius' ships and, after the landing at
Mazara del Vallo, knights. A first battle against the loyal Byzantine troops occurred on July 15, 827, near Mazara, resulting in an
Aghlabid victory.
Asad subsequently conquered the southern shore of the island and laid siege to
Syracuse. After
a year of siege, and an attempted mutiny, his troops were however able to defeat a large army sent from
Palermo, also backed by a Venetian fleet led by Doge
Giustiniano Participazio. But when a plague killed many of the Muslim troops, as well as Asad himself, the Muslims retreated to the castle of
Mineo. Later they returned to the offensive, but failed to conquer
Castrogiovanni (the modern Enna, where Euphemius died) and retreated back to Mazara.
In 830 they received a strong reinforcement of 30,000
Ifriqiyan and Andalusian troops. The Iberian Muslims defeated the Byzantine commander Teodotus in July–August of that year, but again a plague forced them to return to Mazara and then to
Ifriqiya. The
Ifriqiyan units sent to besiege
Palermo managed to capture it after a year long siege in September 831.
[3]Palermo became the Muslim capital of Sicily, renamed al-Madinah ("The City").
[4]
The conquest was a
see-saw affair; with considerable resistance and many internal struggles, it took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be conquered. Syracuse held out for a long time but
fell in 878,
Taormina fell in 902, and the last Byzantine outpost was taken in 965.
[1]
Period As An Emirate
In succession Sicily was ruled by the Sunni
Aghlabid dynasty in
Tunisia and the Shiite
Fatimids in
Egypt. The Byzantines took advantage of temporary discord to occupy the eastern end of the island for several years.
After suppressing a revolt the Fatimid caliph
Ismail al-Mansur appointed
Hassan al-Kalbi (948–964) as Emir of Sicily. He successfully managed to control the continuously revolting Byzantines and founded the
Kalbid dynasty. Raids into
Southern Italy continued under the Kalbids into the 11th century, and in 982 a German army under
Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor was defeated near Crotone in
Calabria. With Emir
Yusuf al-Kalbi (986–998) a period of steady decline began. Under al-Akhal (1017–1037) the dynastic conflict intensified, with factions within the ruling family allying themselves variously with the
Byzantine Empire and the
Zirids.
Sicily Under Muslim Rule
The new Muslim rulers initiated land reforms which in turn, increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, a dent to the dominance of the landed estates. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems, and items such as
oranges,
lemons,
pistachio and
sugarcane were introduced to Sicily. A description of
Palermo was given by
Ibn Hawqal, a Baghdad merchant who visited Sicily in 950. A walled suburb called the Kasr (the palace) is the center of Palermo until today, with the great Friday mosque on the site of the later Roman cathedral. The suburb of Al-Khalisa (
Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison. Ibn Hawqual reckoned 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops. By 1050, Palermo had a population of 350,000, making it one of the largest cities in Europe, second only to
Islamic Spain's capital
Cordova, which had a population of 450,000. In contrast, under the succeeding Christian
Kingdom of Sicily, Palermo's population had dropped to 150,000, though it became the largest city in Europe due to the larger decline in Cordova's population; by 1330, Palermo's population had declined to 51,000.
[5]
Arab traveler, geographer, and poet
Ibn Jubair visited the area in the end of the 12th century and described Al-Kasr and Al-Khalisa (Kalsa):
The capital is endowed with two gifts, splendor and wealth. It contains all the real and imagined beauty that anyone could wish. Splendor and grace adorn the piazzas and the countryside; the streets and highways are wide, and the eye is dazzled by the beauty of its situation. It is a city full of marvels, with buildings similar to those of
Cordoba [sic], built of limestone. A permanent stream of water from four springs runs through the city. There are so many mosques that they are impossible to count. Most of them also serve as schools. The eye is dazzled by all this splendor.
Throughout this reign, continued revolts by Byzantine Sicilians occurred, especially in the east, and part of the lands were even re-occupied before being quashed.
[6]
The local population conquered by the Muslims were Romanized Catholic Sicilians in Western Sicily and partially Greek speaking Christians, mainly in the eastern half of the island, but there were also a significant number of Jews.
[7] These conquered people were afforded a limited
freedom of religion under the Muslims as
dhimmi, but were subject to some restrictions. The
dhimmi were also required to pay the
jizya, or poll tax, and the
kharaj or land tax, but were exempt from the tax that Muslims had to pay (
Zakaat). Under Arab rule there were different categories of Jizya payers, but their common denominator was the payment of the Jizya as a mark of subjection to Muslim rule in exchange for protection against foreign and internal aggression. The conquered population could avoid this subservient status simply by converting to Islam. Whether by honest religious conviction or societal compulsion large numbers of native Sicilians converted to Islam. However, even after 100 years of Islamic rule, numerous Greek speaking Christian communities prospered, especially in north-eastern Sicily, as dhimmi. This was largely a result of the Jizya system which allowed co-existence. This co-existence with the conquered population fell apart after the reconquest of Sicily, particularly following the death of King
William II of Sicily in 1189.
Decline
The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarrels took place between the Muslim regime.
[1] In 1044, under emir
Hasan al-Samsam, the island fragmented into four
qadits, or small fiefdoms: the qadit of Trapani, Marsala, Mazara and Sciacca; that of Girgenti, Castrogiovanni and Castronuovo; that of Palermo and Catania; and that of Syracuse. By 1065, all of them had been unified by Ayyub ibn Tamim, the son of the Zirid emir of Ifriqiyya. In 1068 he left Sicily, and what remained under Muslim control fell under two qadits: one, led by Ibn Abbad (known as Benavert in western chronicles) in Syracuse, and the other under Hammud in
Qas'r Ianni (modern Enna).
By the 11th century mainland southern Italian powers were hiring
Norman mercenaries, who were Christian descendants of the
Vikings; it was the Normans under
Roger I who captured Sicily from the Muslims.
[1] The Norman
Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred,
invaded Sicily in 1060. The island was split between three Arab
emirs, and the sizable Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims.
[8] After taking
Apulia and
Calabria, Roger I occupied
Messina with an army of 700 knights. In 1068,
Roger de Hauteville and his men defeated the Muslims at
Misilmeri but the most crucial battle was the siege of Palermo, which led to Sicily being completely in Norman control by 1091. After the conquest of Sicily, the Normans removed the local emir, Yusuf Ibn Abdallah from power, but did so by respecting Arab customs.
[9]
The loss of the cities, each with a splendid harbor, dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. The city of Qas'r Ianni was still ruled by its emir, Ibn Al-Hawas, who held out for years. His successor, Hamud, surrendered, and converted to
Christianity, only in 1087. After his conversion, Ibn Hamud subsequently became part of the Christian nobility and retired with his family to an estate in
Calabria provided by Roger I. In 1091,
Butera and
Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of
Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians with ease. By the 11th century Muslim power in the Mediterranean had begun to wane.
Aftermath
However, once the Normans had conquered the island, the Muslims were faced with the choice of voluntary departure or subjection to Christian rule. Many Muslims chose to leave, provided they had the means to do so. “The transformation of Sicily into a Christian island”, remarks Abulafia, “was also, paradoxically, the work of those whose culture was under threat”.
[14][15] Despite the presence of an Arab-speaking Christian population, Muslim peasants received baptism from the Roman and Greek Christians and adopted even Greek Christian names; in several instances, Christian serfs with Greek names listed in the Monreale registers had living Muslim parents.
[16][17]
However, the Norman rulers followed a policy of steady Latinization. Some Muslims chose the option of feigning conversion, but such a remedy could only provide individual protection and could not sustain a community.
[18]
‘Lombard’ pogroms against Muslims started in the 1160s. Muslim and Christian communities in Sicily became increasingly geographically separated. The island’s Muslim communities were mainly isolated beyond an internal frontier which divided the south-western half of the island from the Christian north-east. Sicilian Muslims, a subject population, were dependent on the mercy of their Christian masters and, ultimately, on royal protection. When
King William the Good died in 1189, this royal protection was lifted, and the door was opened for widespread attacks against the island’s Muslims. This destroyed any lingering hope of coexistence, however unequal the respective populations might have been.
Henry VI’s death in 1197, and that of his wife
Constance a year later, plunged Sicily into political turmoil. With the loss of royal protection and with
Frederick II still an infant in papal custody, Sicily became a battleground for rival German and papal forces. The island’s Muslim rebels sided with German warlords like
Markward von Anweiler. In response,
Innocent III declared a crusade against Markward, alleging that he had made an unholy alliance with the Saracens of Sicily. Nevertheless, in 1206 that same pope attempted to convince the Muslim leaders to remain loyal.
[19] By this time, the Muslim rebellion was critical, with Muslims in control of Jato, Entella, Platani, Celso, Calatrasi, Corleone (taken in 1208), Guastanella and Cinisi. In other words, the Muslim revolt extended throughout a whole stretch of western Sicily. The rebels were led by Muhammad Ibn Abbād. He called himself the ‘prince of believers’, struck his own coins, and attempted to find Muslim support from other parts of the Muslim world.
[20][21]
However,
Frederick II, no longer a child, responded by launching a series of campaigns against the Muslim rebels in 1221. The
Hohenstaufen forces rooted out the defenders of Jato, Entella, and the other fortresses. Rather than exterminate the Muslims, In 1223,
Frederick II and the Christians began the first deportations of Muslims to
Lucera in Apulia.
[22] A year later, expeditions were sent against Malta and Djerba, to establish royal control and prevent their Muslim populations from helping the rebels.
[20] Paradoxically, Saracen archers were a common component of these “Christian” armies from this era.
[23]
The
House of Hohenstaufen and their successors (
Capetian House of Anjou and
Aragonese House of Barcelona) gradually "Latinized" Sicily over the course of two centuries, and this social process laid the groundwork for the introduction of Latin (as opposed to Byzantine) Catholicism. The process of Latinization was fostered largely by the Roman Church and its liturgy. The annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s, when the final deportations to
Lucera took place
