The island of Sicily (Arabic: صِقِلِّيَة, romanized: Ṣiqilliya) was under Islamic rule from the late ninth to the late eleventh centuries. It became a prosperous and influential commercial power in the Mediterranean, with its capital of Palermo (بَلَرْم, Balarm) serving as a major cultural and political center of the Muslim world.
Sicily was a peripheral part of the Byzantine Empire when Muslim forces from Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia) began launching raids in 652. During the reign of the Aghlabid dynasty of Ifriqiya, a prolonged series of conflicts from 827 to 902 resulted in the gradual conquest of the entire island, with only the stronghold of Rometta, in the far northeast, holding out until 965. The Fatimid Caliphate replaced Aghlabid rule after 909. From 948 onwards, the island was governed by the Kalbid dynasty, who ruled as autonomous emirs while formally acknowledging Fatimid authority.
Under Muslim rule, Sicily became multiconfessional and multilingual, developing a distinct Arab-Byzantine culture that combined elements of its Islamic Arab and Berber migrants with those of the local Latin, Greek, and Jewish communities. Lucrative new crops were introduced, advanced irrigation systems were built, and urban centers were beautified with gardens and public works; the resulting wealth led to a flourishing of art and science.
Beginning in the early eleventh century, political authority began to fracture from internal strife and dynastic disputes. Christian Norman mercenaries under Roger I ultimately conquered the island, founding the County of Sicily in 1071; the last Muslim city on the island, Noto, fell in 1091, marking the end of independent Islamic rule in Sicily. As the first Count of Sicily, Roger maintained relative tolerance and multiculturalism; Sicilian Muslims remained citizens. Until the late twelfth century, and probably as late as the 1220s, Muslims formed a majority of the island's population, and even occupied positions in the royal court. But by the mid thirteenth century, Muslims who had not already left or converted to Christianity were expelled, ending roughly four hundred years of Islamic presence in Sicily.
Over two centuries of Islamic rule has left some traces in modern Sicily. Minor Arabic influence remains in the Sicilian language and in local place names; a much larger influence is in the Maltese language that derives from Siculo-Arabic. Other cultural remnants can be found in the island's agricultural methods and crops, cuisine, and architecture.
History
Early Muslim conquest of Sicily
In 535, Emperor Justinian I reconquered Sicily for the Roman Empire, which by then was ruled from Constantinople. As the power of what is now known as the Byzantine Empire waned in the West, a new and expansionist power was emerging in the Middle East: the Rashidun Caliphate, the first major Muslim state to emerge following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 632. Over a period of twenty five years, the caliphate succeeded in annexing much of the Persian Sasanian Empire and former Roman territories in the Levant and North Africa. In 652, under Caliph Uthman, an invasion captured most of the island, but Muslims occupation was short-lived, as they left following his death.
By the end of the seventh century, with the Umayyad conquest of North Africa, the Muslims had captured the nearby port city of Carthage, allowing them to build shipyards and a permanent base from which to launch more sustained attacks.
Around 700, the island of Pantelleria was captured by Umayyads, and it was only discord among the Muslims that prevented an attempted invasion of Sicily at that time. Instead, trading agreements were arranged with the Byzantines, and Muslim merchants were allowed to trade goods at Sicilian ports.
The first true attempt at conquest was launched in 740; in that year the Muslim prince Habib, who had participated in 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.
Muslim conquest
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. He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah, the Aghlabid emir of Ifriqiya (around present-day Tunisia), in return for a place as a general and safety; the Emir agreed, offering to give Euphemius the island in exchange for a yearly tribute. The conquest was entrusted to the 70-year-old qadi Asad ibn al-Furat, who led a force 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 100 ships. Reinforced by the Muslims, Euphemius' ships landed at Mazara del Vallo, where the first battle against loyalist Byzantine troops occurred on July 15, 827, resulting in an Aghlabid victory.
Asad subsequently conquered the southern shore of the island and laid siege to Syracuse. After year-long siege, and an attempted mutiny, his troops were able to defeat a large army sent from Palermo, backed by a Venetian fleet led by Doge Giustiniano Participazio. A sudden outbreak of plague killed many of the Muslim troops, as well as Asad himself, forcing the Muslims to retreat to the castle Mineo. They later renewed their offensive, but failed to conquer Castrogiovanni (modern Enna) where Euphemius was killed, forcing them to retreat back to their stronghold at Mazara.
In 830, the remaining Muslims of Sicily received a strong reinforcement of 30,000 Ifriqiyan and Andalusi troops. The Iberian Muslims defeated the Byzantine commander Teodotus between July and August of that year, but again a plague forced them to return to Mazara and later Ifriqiya. However, Ifriqiyan units sent to besiege the Sicilian capital of Palermo managed to capture it after a year-long siege in September 831. Palermo was made the Muslim capital of Sicily, renamed al-Madinah ("The City"), and it became the base for further conquests on the island.
The conquest was an incremental, see-saw affair. With considerable resistance and many internal struggles, it took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be fully conquered. Messina was besieged and captured in 842 or 843, possibly with the support of some Neapolitans, and became a base for subsequent campaigns into the Italian mainland. Syracuse was captured in 878. The conquest of the island was not fully completed until 902, when Taormina was conquered. Even after this, however, some patches of local Byzantine/Christian resistance continued until 967, after the end of the Aghlabid period.
Muslim rule
In succession, Sicily was ruled by the Sunni Aghlabid dynasty in Ifriqiya until 909, when they were overthrown and replaced by the Shiite Fatimids. The first years of Fatimid rule after 909 were difficult, as the Sicilian Muslims had already begun to acquire a distinct identity and they resisted attempts by new outsiders to assert themselves. The first Fatimid governor was expelled in 912 and the second one, Ibn Qurhub, rebelled until 916. Fatimid authority was only established more securely with the defeat of rebels and the surrender of Palermo in 917. Salim ibn Abi Rashid served as Fatimid governor from 917 to 936. He was related by marriage to the Kalbids, a high-ranking family loyal to the Fatimids. Another major revolt for independence shook the island in 937 and was only suppressed in 941.
In 948, the Fatimid caliph al-Mansur appointed the Kalbid commander al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Kalbi as governor of the island. He became the first emir of the Kalbid dynasty, which effectively ruled the island for the next century on behalf of the Fatimids. Al-Hasan returned to Ifriqiya upon the death of al-Mansur, leaving his son Ahmad as governor of the island, though he returned later to assist in campaigns against the Byzantines. Under Ahmad's tenure, Taormina was conquered again in 962 and Rometta was conquered soon after. The Fatimids subsequently conquered and moved to Egypt in 972–973, leaving the Zirids as their viceroys in Ifriqiya. It was only after this move to Egypt that the Fatimid caliphs implicitly recognized the Kalbids as hereditary rulers, who thenceforth governed the island as amirs on their behalf.
Throughout this period, Sunni Muslims formed the majority of the Muslim community in Sicily, with most (if not all) of the people of Palermo being Sunni, leading to their hostility to the Shia Kalbids. The Sunni population of the island was replenished following sectarian rebellions across north Africa from 943–947 against the Fatimids' harsh religious policies, leading to several waves of refugees fleeing to Sicily in an attempt to escape Fatimid retaliation. The Byzantines took advantage of temporary discord to occupy the eastern end of the island for several years.
Raids into Southern Italy continued under the Kalbids into the 11th century, and in 982 a joint Christian army under the Emperor Otto II and the brothers Landulf and Pandulf was defeated at Stilo near Crotone in Calabria. But Emir Abu'l-Qasim was killed in battle and with Emir Yusuf al-Kalbi (986–998) a period of steady decline began. Under Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Akḥal (1017–1037) the dynastic conflict intensified, with factions within the ruling family allying themselves variously with the Byzantine Empire and the Zirids. After this period, Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis attempted to annex the island for the Zirids, while intervening in the affairs of the feuding Muslims; however, the attempt ultimately failed.
Decline and "Taifa" period
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 de Hauteville, who became Roger I of Sicily, that captured Sicily from the Muslims. In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniaces crossed the strait of Messina, and included a corps of Normans. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse. Despite his conquest of the latter, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines. The Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, then conquered Sicily in 1060 after taking Apulia and Calabria, while his brother Roger de Hauteville occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. Many Anglo-Danish and Varangian mercenaries fought in Southern Italy, including Harald Hardrada and William de Hauteville who conquered parts of Sicily between 1038 and 1040, and Edgar the Ætheling who fought in the Norman conquest of southern Italy. Runestones were raised in Sweden in memory of warriors who died in Langbarðaland (Land of the Lombards), the Old Norse name for southern Italy.
The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment amid intra-dynastic quarrels. In 1044, under emir Al-Ḥasan al-Ṣāmṣām, the island devolved into four qadits, or small fiefdoms: Trapani, Marsala, Mazara and Sciacca led by Abdallah ibn Mankut; that of Agrigento, Castrogiovanni and Castronuovo under Ibn al-Hawwas; Catania held by Ibn al-Maklati; and that of Syracuse under Ibn al-Thumna, while al-Samsam retained control of Palermo longer, before it adopted self-rule under a council of sheikhs. There followed a period of squabbles among the qadits that likely represented kin-groups jockeying for power. Ibn al-Thumna killed Ibn al-Maklati, took Catania and married the dead qadi's widow who was the sister of Ibn al-Hawwàs. He also took ibn Mankut's qadit, but when his wife was prevented from returning from a visit to her brother, the Fatimid-allied Ibn al-Thumna attacked Ibn al-Hawwas only to be defeated. When he left Sicily to recruit more troops, this briefly left Ibn al-Hawwas in control of most of the island. In waging his war on his rivals, Ibn al-Thumna had collaborated closely with the Normans, each using the other to further their goal of ruling the entire island, and though Ibn al-Thumna's death in a 1062 ambush led the Normans to draw back and consolidate, Ibn al-Thumna's former allies appear to have continued the alliance, such that Muslim troops constituted the majority of the Hauteville "Norman" army in Sicily.
The Zirids of North Africa sent an army to Sicily led by Ali and Ayyub ibn Tamin, and these troops progressively brought the qadits under their control, killing al-Hawwàs and effectively making Ayyub emir of Muslim Sicily. However, they lost two decisive battles against the Normans. The Sicilians and North Africans were defeated in 1063 by a small Norman force at the Battle of Cerami, cementing Norman control over the north-east of the island. The sizeable Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims. Then in 1068, Roger and his men defeated Ayyub at the Battle of Misilmeri, and the Zirids returned to North Africa, leaving Sicily in disarray. Catania fell to the Normans in 1071. Palermo, ruled since the Zirid withdrawal by Ibn al-Ba'ba, a man apparently of Spanish Jewish descent from the city's merchant class who led the city with the support of its sheikhs, would in turn fall on 10 January 1072 after a five-month siege. Trapani capitulated the same year.