Sicily

Abstract

Sicily is a large and fertile island at the center of Mediterranean trading networks. Renewed public interest in its medieval past, a surge in research in recent years, and the richness of its archaeological and architectural heritage make it particularly fascinating for scholars of the Islamic world and beyond. While conquered much later than other regions, it saw an incomplete Islamization during the two and a half centuries of Muslim rule but an incredible economic growth especially during the 10th century. The fulcrum of the Sicilian social, economic, and cultural transformations was the great metropolis, al-Madina, Balarm (Palermo). Contrary to scholarly assumption, the arrival of the Normans in 1061 was not painless, and archaeological evidence points to gradual but substantial changes. Social and cultural tensions at the end of the Norman kingdom came to a head in Swabian times. Sicily in the late 13th century is a different world to 10th-century Sicily in every way: crops, culture, language and religion, settlement models, material culture, and networks of exchange.