History of Islam in southern Italy
The Arab raids were part of a larger struggle for power in Italy and Europe, with Christian Byzantine, Frankish, Norman and indigenous Italian forces also competing for control.
[4] The conquests of the Normans established Roman Catholicism firmly in the region, where Eastern Christianity had been prominent during the time of Byzantine rule and even remained significant during Islamic period.
[7] In 1300, Giovanni Pipino da Barletta, count of Altamura, seized Lucera and exiled its population, bringing an end to the medieval Muslim presence in Italy.
In 805, the imperial patrician of Sicily, Constantine, signed a ten-year truce with Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab, Emir of Ifriqiya, but this did not prevent Arab fleets from other areas of Africa and Spain from attacking Sardinia and Corsica from 806 to 821.
After a year of 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.
New troops arrived in the island from the new Emir Al-Aghlab Abu Affan and occupied Platani, Caltabellotta, Corleone, Marineo, and Geraci, granting the Muslims total control of western Sicily.
In 836, Muslim ships helped their ally, Andrew II of Naples, when he was besieged by Beneventan troops,[11] and with Neapolitan support Messina was also conquered in 842 by Muhammad Abul Abbas of Sicily, who later established the Emirate of Bari.
Each city had a council called a gema, composed of the most eminent members of the local society, which was entrusted with the care of the public works and of the social order.
A walled suburb called the Kasr (the citadel) was (and remains) the center of Palermo, and the great Friday mosque stood on the site of the later Roman cathedral.
Two years later a revolt in Taormina was bloodily suppressed, but the resistance of the Christians in the Siege of Rometta led the new emperor Nikephoros II Phokas to send an army of 40,000 Armenians, Thracians, and Slavs under his nephew Manuel, who captured Messina in October 964.
In 1005, a Christian fleet coming from Pisa sacked the Arab held Reggio Calabria and massacred all the Saracens to the great jubilation of the local population.
Al-Akhal asked the Byzantines for support while his brother abu-Hafs, leader of the rebels, received troops from the Zirid Emir of Ifriqiya, al-Muizz ibn Badis, which were commanded by his son Abdallah.
[26] This resulted in a rebellion by Sicilian Muslims,[27] which in turn triggered organized resistance and systematic reprisals which marked the final chapter of Islam in Sicily.
[37] A remnant of the descendants of these Provençal colonists, still speaking a Franco-Provençal dialect, has survived till the present day in the villages of Faeto and Celle di San Vito.
The main reason that some former Muslims were able to remain in Sicily was that they were openly supported by the Duke of Osuna, now officially installed as viceroy in Palermo, advocated to the Spanish monarch in Madrid for allowing the Moriscos to stay in Sicily, exempting them from enslavement or from expulsion to Barbary, as long as they wanted “to be Christians and live accordingly.” On many occasions, the Duke of Osuna openly stressed the heroism of the Moors who had freed eight Christian prisoners in Bizerte, Tunisia.
[48] The Emirate of Taranto is the name given to an approximate Muslim settlement built starting from 840 by warriors from the recently conquered Sicily (827) who would have been under the command of a certain Saba, not better identified but remembered by Venetian chronicle of John the Deacon.
[50] The Venetians, to defend their role as a commercial port of Byzantium (whose traffic had been threatened by a destructive Saracen raid on Brindisi in 838),[51] already intervened in the spring of 841, probably on behalf of the Byzantines, moving against Taranto with a fleet of sixty ships, but were defeated in the Ionian Sea and pursued as far as Istria, where the Muslims sacked the island of Cres, also setting fire to Ancona and attempting an incursion from the mouth of the Po.
[52] These victories strengthened the base of Taranto, at least in this time not an independent state, much less an "Emirate", but a foothold from which to start raids in the Adriatic and in the surrounding cities, initially at the service of the rebel Siconulf, prince of Salerno.
[57] In fact, it was Naples that first brought Saracen troops to the south Italian mainland when Duke Andrew II hired them as mercenaries during his war with Sicard, Prince of Benevento, in 836.
[60] In the meantime, an army coming from Spoleto and headed by Lombard Duke Guy, attacked the Arabs, hindered by booty and prisoners, in front of the city walls, pursuing a part of them until Centumcellae, while another group tried to reach Miseno by land.
[61] Three years later, the same coalition of maritime powers, led by Caesar of Naples and supported by the Papal States, defeated another Arabic fleet near the recently refortified Ostia.
As Patricia Skinner relates: [Pandenolf] began to attack Gaeta's territory, and in retaliation against the pope Docibilis unleashed a group of Arabs from Agropoli near Salerno on the area around Fondi.
In 915, Pope John X organised a vast alliance of southern powers, including Gaeta and Naples, the Lombard princes and the Byzantines; 'though, the Amalfitans stood aloof.
[67] In 999 a last Saracen attempt of conquest of Salerno was thwarted by an alliance of Lombards, led by Prince Guaimar III, and a band of Norman pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.
[70]Pope Sixtus IV called for a crusade, and a massive force was built up by Ferdinand I of Naples, among them notably troops of Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, despite frequent Italian quarreling at the time.
Pozzuoli and Castellamare in the Bay of Naples were attacked in 1548; Ischia in 1544; Reggio in Calabria in 1594 (cathedral destroyed); and Vieste, Vasto and Manfredonia were raided and sacked in 1554, 1560, and 1620 respectively.
Because of the Saracen attacks in the 9th century, Tharros was abandoned in favor of Oristano after more than 1,800 years of habitation; Caralis, Porto Torres and numerous other coastal centres suffered the same fate.
In 805, the imperial patrician of Sicily Constantine signed a ten-year truce with Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, emir of Ifriqiya, but this was not an impediment to the other pirates from North Africa and Muslim Spain to attack repeatedly Sardinia between 806 and 821.
[72] In 1015 and again in 1016 the Emir Mujāhid al-‘Āmirī of Denya (Latinized as Museto) from the taifa of Denia, in the east of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), attacked Sardinia and attempted to establish political control over it.
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily in the early 13th century, is said to have been able to speak Arabic (as well as Latin, Sicilian, German, French, and Greek) and had several Muslim ministers.
