The opportunity for the Aghlabid emirs of Ifriqiya (present-day Tunisia) came in 827, when the commander of the island's fleet, Euphemius, rose in revolt against the Byzantine Emperor Michael II.

The latter regarded this as an opportunity for expansion and for diverting the energies of their own fractious military establishment and alleviating the criticism of the Islamic scholars by championing jihad, and dispatched an army to aid him.

[2] Protected by the sea, the island was spared the ravages inflicted on Byzantine Italy through the Lombard invasions of the late 6th and early 7th centuries, and retained a still flourishing urban life and a civilian administration.

As John Bagnell Bury writes, "A fruitful land and a desirable possession in itself, Sicily's central position between the two basins of the Mediterranean rendered it an object of supreme importance to any Eastern sea-power which was commercially or politically aggressive; while for an ambitious ruler in Africa it was the steppingstone to Italy and the gates of the Adriatic.

[7][8] It was Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, the Abbasid governor of Ifriqiya, who first made plans to invade the island in force and attempt to capture it and Sardinia in 752–753, but he was thwarted by a Berber rebellion.

[7][9] In 799, the founder of the Aghlabid dynasty, Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, secured recognition of his position as autonomous emir of Ifriqiya by the Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid, thereby marking the establishment of a practically independent state centred on modern Tunisia.

Her brothers protested to Emperor Michael II, and the Byzantine ruler ordered the island's strategos, Constantine Soudas, to investigate the matter and if the charges were found true, to cut off Euphemius' nose as punishment.

[18] At this point, however, Euphemius was deserted by one of his closest and most powerful allies, a man known through Arab sources as "Balata" (according to Vasiliev probably a corruption of his title, while Treadgold holds that he was named Plato[19][20][21]), and his cousin Michael, commander of Palermo.

[25][26] Ziyadat Allah's council was divided over the issue, but in the end the exhortations of the respected qadi of Kairouan, Asad ibn al-Furat, who used quotations from the Quran to support his case, swayed them.

The proposal was probably designed to buy time for the city to better prepare itself for a siege, but Asad, either persuaded by the emissaries' assurances or needing to rest his army, halted his advance for a few days.

Byzantium, which at the same time was forced to face a threat much closer to home at Crete, was unable to send much aid to the beleaguered island, while the Muslims received reinforcements from Africa.

[43][45] Theodotus' success was not to be completed, however: in early summer 830, a fleet from the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in al-Andalus, under the Berber Asbagh ibn Wakil (nicknamed Farghalush) from the Hawwara tribe, arrived in Sicily.

[56] The western third of Sicily (Val di Mazara) fell relatively quickly into Muslim hands, but conquest of the eastern portion of the island was a protracted and haphazard affair.

There is little evidence of large-scale campaigns or pitched battles, and warfare was dominated by repeated Arab attacks on Byzantine citadels, coupled with raids (sa'ifa) in the surrounding countryside, aimed at looting or the extraction of tribute and prisoners from the threatened localities.

[62][63] The Aghlabids replaced Abu Fihr with al-Fadl ibn Yaqub, who displayed great energy: immediately after his arrival he led a raid against the environs of Syracuse, and then another into central Sicily, around Enna.

The Muslim fleet, under al-Fadl ibn Yaqub, raided the Aeolian Islands and seized a number of forts on the northern coast of Sicily, most notably Tyndaris.

Mousele scored a number of successes against Muslim raiding parties but, back in Constantinople, his enemies launched accusations of contacts with the Arabs and designs on the throne.

[83] Without waiting for confirmation of his appointment from Ifriqiya, the new governor attacked and captured the northern fortress of Caltavuturo, and then turned south towards Enna, whose Byzantine commander refused to meet him in the field.

The two armies met near Cefalù, and, in the ensuing battle, the Byzantines were heavily defeated and retired to Syracuse, while Abbas strengthened his position by refortifying and colonizing Enna.

[94] In 865, Khafaja led in person an expedition against the environs of Enna—which may signify that the Byzantines had retaken it, or that they still held forts in its vicinity—before moving onto Syracuse, but again his son Muhammad was defeated in an ambush, losing 1,000 men.

The Muslims, well supplied with siege weapons, launched incessant attacks on the city's defenders, while Syracuse received scant reinforcements from Constantinople, where the bulk of the imperial fleet was apparently occupied with carrying building materials for a sumptuous new church built by Emperor Basil.

[88][111] It was in this climate of military failure that the discontent among broad sections of the Sicilian Muslim population, hitherto kept in check by successful raiding, erupted into open rebellion.

As Metcalfe remarks, "not only does this show the extent of Christian military success against the Aghlabids in eastern Sicily, but it may also have been deliberately aimed at exacerbating tensions within the Muslim army by playing off one faction against another in negotiating their staggered release".

[113] In the event, a full-scale civil war between "Arabs" and "Berbers" erupted in 898, prompting the dispatch of Ibrahim II's son Abu'l-Abbas Abdallah, who had previously suppressed the rebellion in Iriqiya, to the island at the head of an army in summer 900.

Abu'l-Abbas, however, did not tarry and as soon as he had suppressed the rebellion, marched against the Byzantines, ravaging the environs of Taormina and launching an unsuccessful siege of Catania before returning to winter in Palermo.

[123][124] Although a few strongholds in the northeast remained unconquered and in Christian hands,[125] the fall of Taormina marked the effective end of Byzantine Sicily, and the consolidation of Muslim control over the island.

The Fatimids (and after the 950s the Kalbid hereditary governors) continued the conquest, both against the Christian strongholds in the northeast (the Val Demone) and, more prominently, against the Byzantine possessions in southern Italy, punctuated by truces.

[126][127] Taormina itself threw off Muslim control soon after 902,[128] and it was not until 962, possibly in response to the Byzantine reconquest of Crete the previous year, that the Fatimids retook the town, following a 30-week siege.

[129][130] In the next year, the Muslims attacked the last remaining Christian stronghold on the island, Rometta, which prompted an expedition sent by the Byzantine emperor, Nikephoros II Phokas, to recover Sicily.

[137] The long Arab–Byzantine struggle left abiding traces on the island's subsequent history: although under Muslim rule, Sicilian culture quickly became Arabicized, the Christian communities in the central and eastern parts largely resisted islamization.