2013

During the nineteenth century, Sicilian Orientalists wrote the story of Sicily’s domination by the Arabs and the Arabic-language culture of the Normans – centuries of eventful history that had been lost to the West because European historians could not read Arabic documents. In their histories, Sicilians identified an alternate origin for European modernity: the vibrant Arab culture of the medieval Mediterranean transmitted to the continent through borderland states like the Kingdom of Sicily. This essay examines the lives and scholarship of three nineteenth-century Sicilian Orientalists – Pietro Lanza, Vincenzo Mortillaro, and Michele Amari – who worked to articulate a Mediterranean origin for European modernity.

I.S. MED – Interdisciplinary Studies on the Mediterranean, 2024

In his novels, writer and intellectual Vincenzo Consolo (1933–2012) intricately maps the intersecting histories of Sicily’s Mediterranean civilizations. This paper discusses what I call Consolo’s “Mediterranean of remnants,” highlighting the author’s approach to Sicily’s historical narratives as he seeks to recover and emphasize the often neglected Jewish and Arabo-Islamic legacies embedded in the island’s cultural fabric. Through his narrative archeology, Consolo unearths and reinterprets layers of Sicilian history, reimagining his own lineage in the process and challenging traditional views of Sicilian identity. The exploration begins with an analysis of Jewish Sicilian history as depicted in Consolo’s novels Nottetempo, casa per casa and La ferita dell’aprile, linking these stories to his personal reflections on his suspected Jewish ancestry. The paper then shifts to examining his representation of Sicily’s Arabo-Islamic heritage, particularly through his aesthetics of grafting, which he uses to explain the cultural hybridity of Sicilians. Consolo’s works challenge the erasure of Sicilian Jewish and Muslim histories, advocating for a richer, more inclusive understanding of Sicilian identity that acknowledges its profound connections to the broader Mediterranean basin. By weaving these complex narratives together, Consolo not only enriches our understanding of Sicilian history and literature but also contributes to a more nuanced appreciation of the Mediterranean’s multifaceted cultural legacy. This study reaffirms his literary and philosophical significance, positioning his works as essential readings for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Mediterranean’s intercultural dynamics.

Fusions and contacts through the analysis of archaeological evidences in South-East Sicily in the VIII century B.C. A part from the VIII B.C. a fundamental cultural transformation began within the indigenous sites of eastern Sicily as the effect of Hellenic cultural colonization. The reconstruction of preHellenic indigenous culture is often made through the study and analysis of archaeological material dated back to pre-proto historic period and by comparing this material to historic literary fonts of the following periods but always taking in consideration the relatively low reliability of these due to both the time gap between the facts analysed and their first written reports and the lack of objectivity often reported for this kind of documents. For the present work we thus collected all the published archaeological data about historic changes of indigenous sites in eastern Sicily in order to give a better representation of the transformation processes of these sites and make a comparison between different areas. Anthropological methods have been used in order to assess if the modern concept of culture-contact could be applied to such an ancient historic moment. The majority of the material analysed belonged to the funerary sphere and the cult of the deaths while another small part was related to the everyday life (e.g. cutlery, plates, etc.). The sites geomorphological features and their geographical position have also been considered in the analysis. The period here investigated covers three fundamental historical moments: VIII-VII B.C., before the Greek colonization, which describes the material culture of the indigenous populations of the area; VII-VI B.C. that represents the transition period in which were taking place the first interactions with the Hellenic colonies and finally the V B.C. Where the cultural integration process was already concluded. Our results show that the process of integration of the Hellenic culture with the indigenous one seems to have taken place at different times and through different ways across eastern Sicily often defining a clear geographical pattern.

Springer eBooks, 2022

Al-Masāq, 2020

View related articles View Crossmark data and material prosperity between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries that they changed the Maghrib foreverand in doing so, they expanded the pool of potential rivals behind them.

Ibāḍī Community or Communities in Muslim Sicily Abstract The paper will focus on the origin of what appears to be Ibāḍī communities in Sicily from the 4th/9th to the 6th/12th century. The paper will describe the history of the Ibāḍīyah during the period of Muslim rule, especially the possible origins of these communities during and after the Muslim conquest. After the initial invasion a steady stream of immigrants fled the famines, civil wars and religious strife that afflicted North Africa from the 4th/9th century to the late 6th/12th century. This paper addresses the Ibadi Berber tribes that settled on the island and where they were located. The presence of the Ibāḍīyah can be identified by the names of the Berber tribes that participated in the expedition to conquer Sicily in 212/827 and those that appear to have settled later. The conquest began when the Aghlabid dynasty in Ifriqīyah (the region of modern-day Tunisia and western Tripolitania) launched its expedition at the request of the rebellious Byzantine naval commander Euphemius (d. 214/829). Later, agriculturalists from Ifriqīyah soon followed, and others may have migrated after the fall of the Ibadi Rustumid capital Tahert to the Fatimids in 297/909 and 316/928. Using tribal and toponymic The earliest community appears to have settled in the north-west where the towns of Raḥl al-Maghāghī and Manzil Zammūr were located. Other members of the Ibāḍīyah appear to have settled in the southern half of the island, where the town of Tahertina and the city of Enna (Qaṣr Yannah) are located. The paper will address the legal questions that one of these communities posed to an Ibāḍī legal scholar in Gerba and the significance to understanding the political, economic and social impact of their presence. Evidence suggests that their community may have lasted until the 7th/13th century.

Sicily: Heritage of the World, eds. D. Booms and P. Higgs. The British Museum Research Publication Series, London, 2019

I sometimes think about the glories of “Islamic Spain,” or Al-Andalus. Starting around 711 and ending in 1492, Muslim rulers maintained a spirit of convivencia, a Spanish term meaning “living in togetherness” or “coexistence”, which allowed for an unprecedented level of interfaith engagement on the European continent. While Al-Andalus may represent the pinnacle of cooperation among Muslims, Christians and Jews, there is also a brilliant history – too often ignored and still inadequately assessed – coming out of Sicily, an island belonging to modern-day Italy. The unique society that developed in Sicily is hardly mentioned by historians of Europe, Christianity or Islam. Over the course of several centuries, interfaith exchanges in cultural, religious and scientific fields led to a hybrid culture stemming from Norman,Arab and Byzantine influences. For a time, Sicily was truly the crossroads between East and West, Islam and Christianity. The island was one of the rare bright spots of the Middle Ages.