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

Book Review of "The Peoples of Sicily: A Multicultural Legacy" by Louis Mendola and Jacqueline Alio

 

Summary:
This is a landmark book that concisely put together the unique history and melding of cultures that characterized the Norman Era in Sicily. The scholarship of Arab, Greek, Jewish and Norman history in the early medieval period is not new, but it has gained greater prominence in discussing the history of Sicily. In this book, examples of people that represent the cultures present in Sicily at this time, and their contributions are shared in short vignettes, while also giving a framework of what multiculturalism looked like in a time before this term existed the way it does today. The people and concepts describe cover everything from royal history to language to religion to law, and each chapter describes more about the history of Sicily.

Key Quote, Information, or Chapter: 
One of my favorite chapters was on Abdullah al Idrisi, also known as Muhammad al Idrisi. al Idrisi was a Muslim cartographer, scholar, and poet, and came to Sicily to work in the Norman Kingdom. He is best known his silver planisphere, which was the most accurate map of the world for several centuries, and showed the world as round. Mendola and Alio describe how al Idrisi was born in Morocco, and came from an aristocratic family, which included branches in Cordoba and Palermo. He was educated in Cordoba and Marrakesh, and his work was well-known throughout the Muslim World. In addition to his famous map, he wrote a travel book called the "Book of Roger," published in 1154. This covered everything from watching spaghetti made in Trabia, as described by Mendola and Alio, to the number of lakes along the Nile River, to a description of the weather in London. Mendola and Alio point out that some of his achievements has been suppressed in the West, but that his scholarship placed Norman Sicily "alongside Cordoba, Byzantium, Alexandria, and Baghdad."

Reflections of il Moro: 
It is works like this that vividly and clearly connect the dots of history that have deepened the understanding and impact of the amalgamation of cultures that contribute to Sicily and Sicilian culture today. When I first read this book, it opened the door to looking into other scholarship about the Normans, about the Arabs that preceded them, about the Spanish that came soon after, and about other parts of Sicilian history. Louis Mendola and Jacqueline Alio have made a landmark contribution to Sicilian history and scholarship in writing this book.

Book Review of "Where Three Worlds Met" by Sarah Davis-Secord

 

Summary: 
Sarah Davis-Secord uses a variety of sources, including legal court records, ship records, business records, and testimonies of the life of Christian saints to paint a picture of the time when Sicily was ruled via Byzantine Constantinople, the time of Muslim rule through Ifriqiya, and the time or Normans coming into power. The "three worlds" are Christians (the Byzantines, and then the Normans), Muslims (Arabs and Berbers via Ifriqiya/Tunisia), and Jewish people, who were heavily involved in trade throughout the Mediterranean. "Where Three Worlds Met," is incredibly well researched. Davis-Secord is clear when there is strong evidence and when there is limited evidence. She has painstakingly documented her sources, and is clear on her claims.

Key Quote, Information, or Chapter: 
There is so much detailed information in this book! Here are a few parts that stuck out to me:
- Sicilian-Arab coins, the quarter dinars, came to be used throughout the Mediterranean, and were replicated in Salerno. Davis-Secord suggests that this shows trade networks throughout the peninsula at a time when there were established networks with Ifriqiya, Cairo, and al-Andalus.
- When Normans started to come into Sicily, many Muslims stayed, many converted, and some also left. Some of those that left retained the nisba of "al-Siqilli" or "The Sicilian" indicated a long lineage of North Africans whose families were based in Sicily or came from Sicily.
- Although some of those of North African heritage fled Sicily, others were still immigrating to the island, as were some Jews because Tunisia was suffering from drought and food shortages.
- Ultimately, despite being a place of nexus, Sicily's centeredness gave way to Northern Italian merchant control, especially after Norman rule was established.
- The trade and exchange between these three worlds was extensive, there was constant cultural, economics, and political change over time. The population of the island increased significantly under Muslim rule, while still maintaining a strong Jewish population, and a continued Greek-Christian population.
- This really only scratches the surface of some of the later chapters, there is much more in the book!

Reflections of il Moro: 
This books gave me stronger insights into the development of Sicily moving from part of the the Greek East, ruled by Constantinople, and centered in Sircusa, to being a part of North Africa, with power and culture shifting toward Palermo, and then shifting toward Latin Europe with rule of the Normans, who were aligned (mostly) with the Pope. When reading of this history, you can see that the people of Sicily today are the decedents of Eastern peoples from Greece/Constantinople/Syria, and the decedents of Arabs and Berbers, with Arabic-speaking Jewish people in the mix as well. It is hard to believe that Sicily took such a strong swing toward Latin Christianity. The de-centralization of Sicily is also clear, as it fell into less importance, and started a trend of backwards progress. This continues later in history as a Spanish colony, and more recently as part of the Italian republic. This is likely why the Normans are so revered on the island (as is the history of the Muslims and Byzantines). The Normans were in many ways the last period of Sicilians prosperity, and the culmination of these three worlds. It is a shame that so much was lost to history. As the Sicilian-Arab folk character, Giufa, would say, "Alas!"