Article Review: "The End of Muslim Sicily: A Poetics of Fitna" by Nicola Carpentieri

The muqarnas in the Palatine Chapel, that captures art and culture of Sicily during the end of Muslim rule and start of Norman rule. Photo by blog author.

Summary: 

Nicola Carpentieri uses the poetry of two Sicilian poets, al-Tamīmī and Ibn Ḥamdīs, to share an argument that the end of Muslim rule in Sicily meets the description of a fitna that resulted Norman conquest rather than the traditional description from Arabic sources that focuses on the Norman’s actions.. Through poetry, Carpentieri uses the poets’ internal descriptions of their own history to show how the unraveling of the Muslim community (umma) was an affront to both power and religion. This is steeped in an understanding of the history of Islam, how initial divisions early in the establishment of Islam were understood, and how people then related future conflict to those events. While Sicily’s conflict was not the result of differences in the branches of Islam (although that was present in some ways), Carpentieri argues, based on the poetic record, that it was experienced by those involved as a fracturing of the religious community that opened up the ability for the Normans to take power.

Key Quotes, Information, or Chapter:

- “Muslim presence on the island would endure for five centuries into the Norman, Hohenstaufen, and Angevin periods.”

- “little attention has been paid to poetic narratives about the end of Muslim Sicily. This [paper] is concerned with two such narratives, composed by the obscure poet Abū Muḥammad Qāsim ibnʿAbd Allah al-Tamīmī and his better-known colleague Ibn Ḥamdīs.”

- “Through their verses, the two poets sought to enshrine the loss of Sicily in the lore of the Arabian ode and the collective experience of turmoil within the Muslim umma (community).”

- fitna - commonly used as a reference to a civil war, “fitnogenic” - characterized the unrulyness of the Sicilian Muslim colony, which constantly rebelled

- “the word fitna to [describe] turmoil in the island and how the fall of the Kalbid emirate and the civil strife that ushered the Normans into Sicily, that is, the quintessential “Sicilian fitna,” were not addressed as episodes of fitna at all by Arabic historians. But Sicilian Arabic poetry provides us with a different narrative”

- “At the end of the tenth century, Muslim Sicily was collapsing from within”

- “Taking advantage of the turmoil, their vassals across the island proclaimed themselves independent, and Sicily was de facto split in independent principalities, or taifas”

- The continuous bickering of the Sicilian petty princes would eventually consign the island to the Normans, who accomplished its conquest at the end of the eleventh century.”

- An example of the continuous rebellion of Sicily: “al-Akḥal proposed to the Sicilians that they be exempt from a new tax that he would impose only on the North Africans. To this proposal the Sicilians replied that making a distinction between them and the Africans had become impossible since they had been intermarrying for so long. Unperturbed, al-Akḥal went on to propose the very same offer to the North Africans. The North Africans, apparently less scrupulous than their cousins, accepted. As a consequence, a land tax (kharaj) was imposed only on the “Sicilians.” And sure enough, the Sicilians responded with another rebellion.”

- The Fatimid-aligned Zirids in Tunisia sent an army that overthows al-Akhal with the Sicilians, but this ends up leading to a larger rebellion and backfires on the Zirids.

- “By 1040, the Kalbid kingdom had disintegrated. In place of centralized rule, local warlords had seized the main urban centers across the island and proclaimed themselves independent. Soon a power struggle would ensue, drawing the island into civil war. Once again, the Muslims turned against one another. From the chaos of the Sicilian civil war there emerged a strongman: Ibn al-Thumna, lord of Syracuse and Catania.”

- “​​Aided and abetted by Ibn al-Thumna, the Normans cross the Strait of Messina over to Sicily. They find no resistance all the way to Castrogiovanni and take possession of one town after the next. When Ibn al-Thumna is ambushed and killed by fellow Muslims in 1062 the Normans continue in their enterprise, possibly still aided by Ibn al-Thumna’s Muslim army”

- “A-Muʿizz’s successor, Tamīm, refused to abandon the hope of recovering Sicily. In 1063 he dispatched a larger army commanded by his son Ayyūb. These reinforcements were received by Ibn al-Ḥawwās, who was holding out in his impregnable citadel of Castrogiovanni. Ayyūb and his army were encamped at Agrigento”

- “So he marched against Ayyūb with his own army, and fought him in pitched battle. But the people of Agrigento stood by the North Africans, and fought with them against Ibn al-Ḥawwās. In the fray, the latter was struck and killed by an arrow. The army hailed Ayub as king of the Sicilians (mallaka al-ʿaskaruʿalay-him Ayyu‐ba).”

- ibn al-Athīr’s conclusion:

- “fitna is generally applied to disturbances or outright civil war. It suggests the idea of dissension within the umma, that borders on apostasy and the loss of divine guidance.”

- “As a state of rebellion against the divine Law, it is at once crime and punishment.”

- “fracture the cohesion of the community, plunging it into strife”

- “it is clear that al-Tamīmī was part of the Sicilian khaṣṣa —or landed aristocracy—who colonized Sicily in the ninth century”

- “the poet mourns the loss of Muslim Sicily to the Normans and the calamitous events of the Sicilian fitna that led to the invasion. The poem is highly telling of how first-hand accounts of the fitna differed from later elaborations by Arabic historians: al-Tamīmī is unequivocal in accusing the Sicilian Muslims of having called disaster upon themselves and of having brought about the end of Muslim Sicily.

- “Sicilian Muslims turn their swords against one another, and even stab in the back those fighting the real enemy (i.e., the Normans). This clear reference to Ibn al-Thumna, who summons the Normans in aid against Ibn al-Ḥawwās, would not have been lost on al-Tamīmī’s audience. Ibn al-Thumna himself, let us recall here, falls prey to an ambush by the Muslims.”

- “Ibn Ḥamdīs’s verses insist on how turmoil and infighting breach religious codes, conjuring the specter of sectarian antagonism as the great puppeteer behind the scenes of the fitna.”

- “it is clear that al-Tamīmī and Ibn Ḥamdīs were looking beyond the coast of their beloved island to an audience understood as the Maghribī Muslim community in its entirety”

- “...in their eyes it was the Muslims, and not the Normans, who broke Sicily’s heart and drained her life’s blood”

Some scenes of Muslim culture in Sicily from the Palatine Chapel. Photos by blog author. 

Reflections of il Moro: 
Carpentieri uses modern historical methods of reviewing primary documents and using accounts of those from the cultural setting, or most impacted by the events, to construct a stronger understanding of this pivotal historical moment of change in power, politics, and religion in Sicily. Carpentieri shows through the analysis of the poetry of Sicilian Muslims that there was a deeper conflict of “divine law” that would be described as a fitna, and was the result of the splintering of the community, making it vulnerable to the Normans, who were invited in by one of the competing Muslim leaders (an act that repeatedly happened in different ways through Sicilian history). The poetry and the accompanying historical record also highlight an important part of Sicilian Muslim identity. At the time of this transition, two centuries into Muslim rule, the distinction between Sicilian, African, and Muslim did not exist in the way we may think of it today. This is highlighted as an aside to the poetry, when al-Akḥal attempts to tax Sicilian Muslims. Although there is a distinction between Sicilian-born Muslims, and recent arrivals, there is a unified Sicilian Muslim identity rooted in their connection to Islam and (primarily) to North Africa. Again, when looking at the larger historical context, this makes sense. Ibn Ḥamdīs, for example, came from a Muslim family that had been established in the southeast of Sicily for 6-7 generations. Lastly, the poetry highlights something that many in the Sicilian diaspora can relate to today: The profound loss of home. Similar to this time period, in the latest history of changes in political power due to the unification with Italy, Sicilians have experienced the need to leave, and carry the profound loss of home with them. The poetry of al-Tamīmī and Ibn Ḥamdīs, beyond demonstrating the ways how to understand the end of Muslim rule in Sicily, reflect this loss and feeling of home that are still relevant to Sicilians today.

Link to full article by Nicola Carpentieri