A History Of Muslim Sicily

The book, now in it's second revised edition, covers the period of Muslim Arab rule on the island from A.D. 827 to the Norman conquest in A.D. 1070. It is the first detailed study in English covering the various aspects of this 243-year period. It incorporates new Arabic sources and draws upon archaeological studies that hitherto have not been used. The book covers the political, social, economic, demographic, and cultural impacts that during this period forever changed the island's character. All aspects of society underwent change, making Sicily part of the Arabo-Muslim world for more than two hundred years. This new edition has now been updated with the latest research on the subject and with improved maps describing Sicily during the times of the Arabs.

"A study of the period of Muslim Arab rule on the island from A.D. 827 to the Norman conquest in A.D. 1070"--P. [4] of cover.

In 902 the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily fell, and the island would remain under Muslim control until the arrival of the Normans in the eleventh century. Drawing on a lifetime of translating and linguistic experience, William Granara here focuses on the various ways in which medieval Arab historians, geographers, jurists and philologists imagined and articulated their ever-changing identities in this turbulent period. All of these authors sought to make sense of the island's dramatic twists, including conquest and struggles over political sovereignty, and the painful decline of social and cultural life. Writing about Siqilliya involved drawing from memory, conjecture and then-current theories of why nations and people rose and fell. In so doing, Granara considers and translates, often for the first time, a vast range of primary sources - from the master chronicles of Ibn al-Athir and Ibn Khadun to biographical dictionaries, geographical works, legal treatises and poetry - and modern scholarship not available in English. He charts the shift from Sicily as 'warrior outpost' to vital and productive hub that would transform the medieval Islamic world, and indeed the entire Mediterranean.

Take a tour through the Mediterranean’s largest island in this first and only history of Sicily for general readers—perfect for armchair travelers, historians, and anyone planning their next Italian vacation. The emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to its shores throughout the centuries. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy—and countless others—have all held sway and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. Moreover, Sicily’s character has been shaped by what has passed it by. Events that affected Europe, namely the Crusades and Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, had little influence on Italy’s most famous island. The first and only history of Sicily for the general reader, this book examines how location turned this charming Mediterranean island into the epicenter of major historical conquests, cultures, and more. Complete with maps, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, and pronunciation keys, Sicily is at once a useful travel guide and an informative, entertaining exploration of the island’s remarkable history.

“Reading these guides is the next best thing to actually going there with them in hand.” —Foreword Magazine AN ENGAGING INTRODUCTION TO A CULTURAL GIANT Long before it became an Italian offshore island, Sicily was the land in the center of the Mediterranean where the great civilizations of Europe and Northern Africa met. Sicily today is familiar and unfamiliar, modernized and unchanging. Visitors will find in an out-of-the-way town an Aragonese castle, will stumble across a Norman church by the side of a lesser travelled road, will see red Muslim-styles domes over a Christian shrine, will find a Baroque church of breathtaking beauty in a village, will catch a glimpse from the motorway of a solitary Greek temple on the horizon and will happen on a the celebrations of the patron saint of a run-down district of a city, and will stop and wonder. There is more to Sicily than the Godfather and the mafia.

The social and linguistic history of medieval Sicily is both intriguing and complex. Before the Muslim invasion of 827, the islanders spoke dialects of either Greek or Latin or both. On the arrival of the Normans around 1060 Arabic was the dominant language, but by 1250 Sicily was an almost exclusively Christian island, with Romance dialects in evidence everywhere. Of particular importance to the development of Sicily was the formative period of Norman rule (1061 1194), when most of the key transitions from an Arabic-speaking Muslim island to a 'Latin'-speaking Christian one were made. This work sets out the evidence for those changes and provides an authoritative approach that re-defines the conventional thinking on the subject.

‘Abd al-Jabbar ibn Hamdis (1055–1133) survives as the best-known figure from four centuries of Arab-Islamic civilisation on the island of Sicily. There he grew up in a society enriched by a century of cultural development but whose unity was threatened by competing warlords. After the Normans invaded, he followed many other Muslims in emigrating, first to North Africa and then to Seville, where he began his career as a court poet. Although he achieved fame and success in his time, Ibn Hamdis was forced to bear witness to sectarian strife among the Muslims of both Sicily and Spain, and the gradual success of the Christian reconquest, including the decline of his beloved homeland. Through his verse, William Granara examines his life and times.

This book is written by two expert scholars. It tells a fascinating story about a period during the Middle Ages when cultures collided and made war on each other over issues of politics, religion, and wealth (much like the present day). With many views of the famous mosaics in Cefal, Monreale, and Palermo, its 275 color illustrations and four maps provide a beautiful visual complement to an authoritative text.

Muslims in Medieval Italy: The Colony at Lucera is the history of a Muslim colony in the southern Italian city of Lucera during the Middle Ages. Author Julie Taylor draws on a vast array of primary sources, unpublished manuscripts, and archeological data to provide a detailed account of the lives of Muslims against the backdrop of the social and political complexities of medieval Lucera. Taylor's work illuminates the legal and social status of Muslims in Christendom and the contributions made by Muslims to the economy and defense of the kingdom of Sicily, and it also yields noteworthy insights into Muslim-Christian relations. Muslims in Medieval Italy is a thoroughly researched and absorbing account.

This book is an investigative study of Christian and Islamic relations in the kingdom of Sicily during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It has three objectives. First, it establishes how and why the Norman rulers of Sicily, all of whom were Christians, incorporated Muslim soldiers, farmers, scholars, and bureaucrats into the formation of their own royal identities and came to depend on their Muslim subjects to project and enforce their political power. Second, it examines how the Islamic influence within the Sicilian court drew little scrutiny, and even less criticism, from intellectuals in the wider world of Latin Christendom during the time period. Finally, it contextualizes and explains the eventual emergence of Christian popular violence against Muslims in Sicily in the latter half of the twelfth century and the evolution of a wider discourse of anti-Islamic sentiment throughout Western Europe.