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Kufic Arabic script on Martorana window |
Summary:
In this article, there is a detailed review of Arabic in Kufic script on window designs at Martorana and San Giovanni degli Eramiti in Palermo and Santa Maria di Terreti in Calabria. These window designs are used as a means to better understand the impact of Norman conquest of Sicily, the ways in which Sicilians and the Normans related to the previous Muslim period of rule, and how the designs deepen our understanding of how Sicily interacted with the rest of the Mediterranean. Much of the previous research of these eras portray Norman conquest as a radical departure from the previous Muslim connections to Ifriqiya (present day Tunisia) , although it is always acknowledged that Muslims continued to play important roles in Norman leadership and in Sicily. Additionally, what is described at Arab Norman culture, or Arab Byzantine Norman culture, and displayed in places like the Palatina Capella, Monreale, and places described here, like Martorana and San Giovanni, are often described as heavily influenced by the Fatimid Muslims in Cairo. While the Normans did establish political and economic relationships with the Fatimids, and the Fatimids previously authorized local governance of the island, in the Norman Sicily period, the influence of Ifriqiya continued to be the primary Muslim influence, and was a bridge from the previous and fractured Kalbid Muslim rule into Norman rule. Further, the article debunks the myth that much of the Kufic script was fake decorative touches to architecture, and deciphers the meanings of the scripts that can be read.
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| Kufic Arabic at San Giovani degli Eremiti |
Key Quotes:
- This impressive collection of Islamic and Islamicizing materials dating to the periods of Aghlabid, Fatimid, and Norman rule on the island, speaks not only to a largely forgotten Islamic past but also to the critical processes of acculturation and interaction between medieval Sicily and the Maghrib.
- these works all bear epigraphs previously dismissed as pseudo-Kufic.
- They further offer an alternative perspective to the notion of cultural discontinuity that has guided recent research on the arts of Sicily. In considering the connections across the Strait of Sicily joining Sicily and North Africa, this analysis of Norman Sicily’s Kufic epigraphs illuminates Ifriqiya’s central and ongoing role in the production of Norman visual culture.
- Throughout the Aghlabid conquest and ensuing intervention in Sicily, the Aghlabid emirs in Kairouan, the capital of the Aghlabid dynasty in Ifriqiya, appointed governors to rule on their behalf, establishing Sicily as a prominent player in their Mediterranean vision and their state.
- Under the Aghlabids, although the population quickly shifted to a dominant Arabic-speaking community of Berbers, Arab immigrants from Africa, and converts from among the Greek population, a substantial community of Greek Christians continued to live and worship on the island.
- With the foundation of the Fatimid Caliphate, Sicily became an outpost of empire governed by emirs belonging to the Kalbid family (r. 948–1053), who transformed Sicily’s capital of Palermo into a thriving urban center.
- The Kalbids maintained their close contacts with nearby Ifriqiya,while also developing new economic and political ties to the more distant Fatimid Egyptian shores.
-By the late eleventh century, however, local Kalbid power became increasingly fractured, leaving the island ruled by multiple competing emirs.
- In the subsequent thirty years following the conquest of the island, Count Roger I (r. 1071–1101) and his son, the future King Roger II (r. 1130–54) introduced Latin and Latin Christian institutions to the island even as they retained and developed existing administrative and fiscal structures.
- Establishing their control over an already diverse population of Muslims, Greek Christians, Arab Christians, and Jews, they fostered a multicultural ambience on the island.
- Moreover, [this article] complements a growing body of scholarship that has begun to dismantle the notion of a rupture between the pre-Norman and Norman periods, highlighting instead aspects of continuity with artistic cultural production prior to the Norman conquest.
- The grilles’ inscribed text emerges clearly as the repeated alternation of two two-word supplicatory phrases: “ʿizz dāʾim saʿd qāʾim” (conspicuous good fortune, lasting power)
- along its lower border but also part of the central pierced stucco field, as well as colored glass
fragments. The epigraphic border, composed of Kufic letters intersected by a simple rinceaux of alternating demi-palmettes, translates as a string of blessings that likely extended around the entire window grille, “…lk, waal-tawfīq wa al-” (… to you, and success, and …)
- The Martorana Style A and Eremiti window grilles are so similar in their technique, application of glass, epigraphy, and vegetal ornament that it is likely that the same workshop or artisans produced the transennae for both churches.
- The texts appearing on the Martorana and San Giovanni degli Eremiti transennae, as well as on the Santa Maria di Terreti fragments, belong to the category of adʿiya (supplicatory phrases) consistent with formulae appearing almost ubiquitously in the Dar al-Islam.
- Only the last word of the text of Martorana fragment C (fig. 8) can be fully deciphered, but it is likely that the preceding words incorporated a variation of the common formulae “baraka min Allāh liṣāḥibihi” (a blessing of God upon its owner).
- However, while Norman Arabic epigraphy certainly finds parallels in Fatimid sources, the epigraphic component of Norman court culture needs to be seen in a larger context than a Palermo-Cairo axis.
- …Even with the Norman conquest, Sicily remained deeply embedded in the economic system of Ifriqiya, with Egypt rarely figuring in accounts of commercial travel
- Rather than in Fatimid Egypt, the stucco epigraphs of the Martorana, San Giovanni degli Eremiti, and Santa Maria di Terreti find their closest parallels in their content, ornament, and epigraphic style in nearby Ifriqiya and the Maghrib.
- The polychromy and ornament of the stuccoes further align with the epigraphic styles of Fatimid and Zirid Ifriqiyan inscriptions.
- The Martorana’s polychromy is consistent with the twelfth-century description of the church’s windows by Arab traveler and geographer Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217), in which he marvels at the
“shamsiyyat al-mudhahhabat min al-zujāj” (gilded windows of glass)
- Finally, in their materials and construction, the southern Italian and Sicilian stuccoes may also follow Ifriqiyan precedents.
- The early Norman stucco epigraphs not only point to the critical role played by Ifriqiya in the production of Norman epigraphy, but further highlight an unbroken epigraphic tradition established well before the crowning of Roger II as king of Norman Sicily in 1130.
- During the period of Muslim rule over Sicily, the Ifriqiyan emirs likely adorned the public monuments of their Sicilian province in a similar manner to those in the major cities of Ifriqiya.
- A tenth-century monumental inscription in Kufic letters mentioning the Kalbid governor of Sicily
and the Fatimid caliph al-Muʿizz (r. 953–75) commemorates the building of a castle at Termini Imerese.
- One epitaph dating to 1081 further references inhabitants of Sicily, preserving the name of
“Sayyidat al-ahl bint ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Ṣayrafiyy min Ahl Maz(a)r,” literally, the woman of the
family, daughter of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz of Vallo, a town in the province of Trapani, Sicily.” Thus, the textual data provides substantial evidence of the migration and interconnectivity of peoples across North Africa and Sicily.
- By the 1140s, as George of Antioch sponsored the construction of the Martorana and Roger II supported the renovation of the San Giovanni degli Eremiti Church, the kingdom had developed a close political relationship with the Fatimid court in Cairo. However, the production of the churches’ stucco window grilles did not directly rely upon the epigraphic styles then on display in the Fatimid Empire. Local artisans could find pre-Norman Kufic epigraphs still adorning the towers of the city or newly incorporated into Norman buildings
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| Martorana Window |
Reflections of il Moro:
So much of the research in this area is about determining what would be expected from what actually is. Maybe even deeper, when looking at the stories passed across the generations, what is myth and what is real? After over 200 years of Muslim rule, primarily through the nominal rule of whoever was leading in Kairouan, Ifriqiya it would be expected that Sicilians would have acculturated to a common culture that maintained existing connections. These connections and culture would not have instantly changed with a relatively small group of Normans taking over. So the windows in Martorana and San Giovanni reflect this legacy, and show the enduring cultural influence of Ifriqiya on Sicilia. Although the window designs and Kufic Arabic are centered in this research, we know it extends beyond these details to the red domes throughout Palermo, the muqarnas ceilings of the Capella Palatina and La Zisa, the courtyard at Monreale, and so on. And into administrative structures that the Norman adopted, and philosophical and scientific scholarship that the Kalbids and Ifriqiya cultivated in the numerous schools that existed even through fractured rule. The Kufic script is literally and figuratively a window into the ways in which Sicilia was shaped by Ifriqiya into Norman rule, and well beyond.
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| The red dome of San Giovanni in Palermo |
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