History of Islam in southern Italy

• 1. A Judge Goes to War

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  The history of Islam in southern Italy begins with an unlikely commander, a 70-year-old judge named Asad ibn al-Furat. He was a qadi, an Islamic judge, yet in 827 the Aghlabid emir of Ifriqiya handed him an invasion fleet bound for Sicily. What followed stretched across several centuries. Muslim rulers governed an island for generations, small Muslim states took root on the mainland, and raiding fleets pushed deep into the peninsula. Why would an emir trust a judge with an army? Why did Christian cities sometimes hire Muslim soldiers and fight beside them? And what remained once the last Muslim communities had been driven out?

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• 2. Conquest of Sicily

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  In 652, the first Arab ships struck Sicily, which then belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Olympius, the Byzantine exarch of Ravenna, came to expel the invaders and failed. In 669 a force of 200 ships from Alexandria sacked Syracuse and sailed home to Egypt after a month of pillaging. Once Arab rule across North Africa was complete around 700, fleets returned again and again. Raids came in 703 and then six more times between 728 and 734. The first serious bid for conquest came in 740, when Habib ibn Abi Obeida al-Fihri captured Syracuse. A Berber revolt forced his expedition back to Tunisia.

  Diplomacy ran alongside the violence. In 805, the imperial patrician of Sicily, Constantine, signed a ten-year truce with Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab, emir of Ifriqiya. In 812 the emir's son Abdallah I sent an invasion fleet, but ships from Gaeta and Amalfi harassed it and a tempest destroyed many vessels. Survivors still seized Lampedusa and ravaged Ponza and Ischia. A later agreement with the new patrician Gregorius guaranteed free commerce between southern Italy and Ifriqiya.

  The decisive push came through a rebel. According to some sources, a Byzantine commander named Euphemius feared punishment from Emperor Michael II over a sexual indiscretion. After briefly taking Syracuse, he was proclaimed emperor, then driven to flee to the court of the emir Ziyadat Allah in Africa. The emir agreed to invade, promising Sicily to Euphemius in exchange for a yearly tribute. Command went to Asad. His army counted 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 100 ships, and Euphemius brought his own fleet. The first battle, fought near Mazara on the 15th of July 827, ended in an Aghlabid victory.

  Syracuse proved harder. Asad besieged it for a year, put down an attempted mutiny, and beat a large army sent from Palermo and backed by a Venetian fleet under the doge Giustiniano Participazio. Then plague struck, killing many of his soldiers and Asad himself. The survivors fell back to the castle of Mineo. They failed to take Castrogiovanni, the modern Enna, where Euphemius died. In 830 a reinforcement of 30,000 African and Spanish troops arrived. Berber units then besieged Palermo for a year and captured it in September 831. Renamed al-Madinah, it became the Muslim capital of Sicily.

  In February 832, Ziyadat Allah sent his cousin Abu Fihr Muhammad ibn Abd-Allah to govern the island as wali. Messina fell in 842, helped by Neapolitan support. In 845 the Byzantines lost about 10,000 men in a crushing defeat near Butera. Under Abbas ibn Fadhl, Castrogiovanni finally fell in the winter of 859, and many of its captives were sent to the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil as proof of victory. Syracuse surrendered on the 21st of May 878, after a new siege. Taormina, the last main Byzantine stronghold, fell on the 1st of August 902.

  The old emir Ibrahim II ibn Ahmad, who had abdicated in Tunis, then led operations in person on the mainland and besieged Cosenza. He died of dysentery on the 24th of October. His grandson called off the campaign and sailed back to Sicily, ending a conquest that had taken 75 years.

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• 3. Life Under the Emirs

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  A Baghdad merchant named Ibn Hawqal visited Palermo in 950 and left a description that survives. He found a city of about 300,000 people, the most populous in Italy. A walled suburb called the Kasr, the citadel, formed its center, and the great Friday mosque stood where the Roman cathedral would later rise. The suburb of Al-Khalisa, known today as the Kalsa, held the sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices and a private prison. Ibn Hawqal also counted 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops.

  The machinery behind such a city was layered. The emir in Palermo appointed the qadis who governed the main cities and the hakims who ran lesser ones, along with other officials. Each city had a council called a gema, made up of its most eminent residents, which looked after public works and social order. Settlers from Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East had increased the population. The new rulers also reformed land holding, encouraging smallholdings and improving irrigation, though the large estates remained dominant.

  The conquered majority were Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians, alongside a significant number of Jews. They lived as dhimmi, protected peoples with limited freedom of religion and some legal restrictions. They paid the jizya, a poll tax, and the kharaj, a land tax, but were exempt from the zakat that Muslims paid. Anyone could escape that status by converting to Islam, and large numbers of Sicilians did, whether from conviction or social pressure. Even so, after a century of Islamic rule, Greek-speaking Christian communities still prospered, especially in the north-east of the island.

  That coexistence would not last. It fell apart after the Christian reconquest, particularly following the death of King William II of Sicily in 1189.

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• 4. Revolts and the Kalbids

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  In 909, the Fatimid Caliphate, an Ismaili Shi'i dynasty, replaced the Aghlabids in Africa. Three years later, Sicily declared independence under the emir Ibn Qurhub and ousted the Fatimid governor. His failed siege of Taormina, which Christians had rebuilt, weakened his standing. By 917 a Fatimid fleet, called in by a dissatisfied Sicilian faction, was besieging Palermo. After six months, Ibn Qurhub and his son were captured and executed.

  Berber unrest flared again in 937, when the people of Agrigento rose in revolt. After two striking successes they were beaten at the gates of Palermo. The new Fatimid caliph, al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah, sent an army that besieged Agrigento twice before it fell on the 20th of November 940. The revolt was fully crushed in 941, with many prisoners sold as slaves. Governor Khalil boasted of having killed 600,000 people in his campaigns.

  In 948, after putting down yet another revolt, the Fatimid Caliph Ismail al-Mansur named al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Kalbi emir of the island. The office soon became hereditary, and Sicily became de facto independent of Africa. In 950 al-Hasan attacked the Byzantines in southern Italy as far as Gerace and Cassano allo Ionio. After a Calabrian campaign in 952, Emperor Constantine VII had to accept that Calabrian cities would pay tribute to Sicily. The Byzantines retook Reggio in 956 and invaded Sicily, and a truce followed in 960.

  The siege of Rometta then drew in a far larger enemy. Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas sent 40,000 Armenians, Thracians and Slavs under his nephew Manuel, who took Messina in October 964. Byzantine forces were soon routed at Rometta and in the Battle of the Straits. Manuel died with 10,000 of his men, and the Islamic conquest of Sicily was complete.

  The emir Abu'l-Qasim Ali ibn al-Hasan al-Kalbi led raids on Calabria in the 970s while his brother's fleet attacked the Adriatic coast of Apulia. Alarmed, the German Emperor Otto II intervened, but his German-Lombard army was defeated in 982 at the Battle of Stilo. Abu'l-Qasim died there, and his son Jabir al-Kalbi prudently withdrew to Sicily.

  The emirate reached its cultural peak under Ja'far, who ruled from 983 to 985, and Yusuf al-Kalbi, who ruled from 990 to 998. Both were patrons of the arts. Yusuf's son, also named Ja'far, proved cruel and violent and expelled the Berbers from the island after a failed revolt. In 1019 an uprising in Palermo succeeded, and he was exiled to Africa. His brother al-Akhal took power and defeated two Byzantine expeditions, in 1026 and 1031.

  A heavy tax to pay al-Akhal's mercenaries then triggered civil war. His brother abu-Hafs led the rebels and received troops from the Zirid emir of Ifriqiya, al-Muizz ibn Badis, commanded by the emir's son Abdallah.

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• 5. Footholds in Apulia

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  Between 835 and 843, Aghlabid forces launched the first major expeditions onto the Italian mainland, striking Calabria and Apulia. Amantea fell in 839 or 846 and stayed in Muslim hands until the Byzantines retook it in 886. Taranto was captured in 840 and held until 880. Bari fell in either 840 or 847. Many of these fighters seem to have felt only a loose loyalty to the Aghlabid dynasty. Some even served Naples or local Lombard rulers as mercenaries.

  The Adriatic port of Bari became the capital of a small independent state in 847. It had an emir and a mosque of its own. Its first ruler, Khalfun, probably came from Sicily and died in 852. His successor Mufarraq ibn Sallam enlarged the territory and asked the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil's governor in Egypt to recognize him as wali. Mufarraq was murdered, and Sawdan took power around 857. Sawdan invaded the Lombard Duchy of Benevento and forced Duke Adelchis to pay tribute. In 864 he finally obtained the official investiture his predecessor had sought, and the town gained a mosque, palaces and public works.

  In 866, the Emperor Louis organized a response. His five-year campaign carried him deep into Apulia and Calabria while bypassing major centers such as Bari and Taranto. Muslim bands he met were all defeated. Louis finally attacked Bari with Franks and Lombards, helped by a Croatian fleet. The citadel fell in February 871, and Sawdan was taken in chains to Benevento. A last Saracen attempt on Bari was stopped in 1002, when a Venetian fleet defeated the besiegers.

  Taranto had a different character. A warrior camp from about 840, commanded by a figure named Saba and remembered by the Venetian chronicler John the Deacon, it grew into a base for raids. In the spring of 841, Venice sent a fleet of sixty ships against it and lost. The victors chased the Venetians as far as Istria, sacked the island of Cres, set fire to Ancona and tried an incursion from the mouth of the Po. Its fighters first served the rebel Siconulf, prince of Salerno, and were joined by Berber and Andalusian corsairs exiled to Crete, drawn by easy plunder.

  Around 875 or 876, a certain Uthman, the last presumed emir of Taranto, reportedly negotiated with Duke Adelchi for the release of Sawdan. In 880, a Byzantine fleet commanded by the Syrian Nasar and armies under Procopius and Leo Apostyppes, assembled by Basil I, captured the town. They enslaved its Arab-Berber population and installed a Greek garrison.

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• 6. The Tyrrhenian Sea

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  Duke Andrew II of Naples did something in 836 that changed the mainland war. Fighting Sicard, Prince of Benevento, he hired Saracen mercenaries, becoming the first to bring Saracen troops to the southern mainland. Sicard answered by hiring his own, and the practice soon became normal. Amalfi and Gaeta regularly teamed up with the Saracens, and Naples was hardly better, which angered the Papacy. Throughout the ninth century, Arab ships dominated the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the duchies of Gaeta and Amalfi gained independence from Naples as cities took charge of their own defense.

  In 846, a Saracen force landed at Porto and Ostia and annihilated the local Christian garrison. The Roman militia retreated behind the walls. Around St. Peter's Basilica, members of the Vatican scholae, drawn from Saxons, Lombards, Frisians and Franks, tried to resist and were beaten. No contemporary account says the raiders tried to enter the city. A Lombard army under Duke Guy of Spoleto attacked the Arabs, who were slowed by booty and prisoners. A storm then wrecked many of their ships and washed up corpses wearing jewels, which locals recovered. At Gaeta, only the arrival of Caesar of Naples, son of the Neapolitan commander Sergius, won the battle for the Christians.

  Three years later, Caesar led a coalition supported by the Papal States and defeated another Arab fleet near the newly refortified Ostia. Survivors were enslaved and set to work in chain gangs on the Leonine Wall, built around the Vatican Hill. Rome was never again threatened by an Arab army. In 877, Pope John VIII led an alliance of Capua, Salerno and Gaeta that defeated a Muslim fleet near Mount Circeo, capturing 18 ships and freeing 600 Christian slaves.

  Papal politics could also work in the raiders' favor. Around 880 or 881, John took the town of Traetto from Docibilis I of Gaeta and gave it to Pandenulf of Capua. Docibilis retaliated by unleashing Arabs from Agropoli, near Salerno, on the area around Fondi. Historian Patricia Skinner relates that the pope was "filled with shame" and restored Traetto. Saracens then settled permanently at the mouth of the Garigliano river.

  In 898, Saracens burned the Abbey of Farfa to the ground. Abbot Peter organized the monks' escape and saved the library and archives. The monastery was destroyed again in 905. The Saracen fortress at Minturno on the Garigliano remained a thorn in the Papacy's side until 915, when Pope John X assembled a vast alliance including Gaeta, Naples, the Lombard princes and the Byzantines, while the Amalfitans stayed aloof. In the Battle of the Garigliano, every Saracen was captured and executed, ending any Arab presence in Lazio or Campania. In 999, a last attempt on Salerno was thwarted by Prince Guaimar III and a band of Norman pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.

  Sardinia faced attacks from 705 to 706, when Saracens from newly conquered North Africa began harassing coastal towns. Raids in the ninth century were so damaging that Tharros was abandoned for Oristano after more than 1,800 years of habitation. In 1015 and 1016, Emir Mujahid al-Amiri of Denia in Muslim Spain tried to take control of the island. A Pisan poem records that the judge of Cagliari, Salusius, was killed and organized resistance broke down. Joint expeditions by Pisa and Genoa, backed by the Papacy, repelled the invaders. They have been called precursors of the Crusades, which began eighty years later. The attacks failed to conquer Sardinia but weakened its independence, and every one of its states except Arborea fell into a struggle between Italian powers.

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• 7. Normans and Northmen

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  In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniaces crossed the strait of Messina to retake Sicily. A corps of Normans saved the situation in the first clash with the Muslims of Messina. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted to besiege Syracuse and took it. Then he was removed from command, and a Muslim counter-offensive won back every city he had captured.

  His army was a crossroads of northern Europe. Many Anglo-Danish and Varangian mercenaries fought in southern Italy, among them Harald Hardrada and William de Hauteville, who conquered parts of Sicily between 1038 and 1040. Edgar the Ætheling left England in 1086 and fought in the Norman conquest of southern Italy. Runestones raised in Sweden commemorate warriors who died in Langbarðaland, the Old Norse name for southern Italy. Jarl Erling Skakke won his nickname, meaning bent head, after a battle against Arabs in Sicily.

  The decisive blow came from Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, who invaded Sicily in 1060. By then the island was split among three Arab emirs, and the Sicilian population rose against its Muslim rulers. Messina fell a year later. Palermo was taken by the Normans in 1072, and the loss of two cities with splendid harbors badly damaged Muslim power. In 1091, Noto in the southern tip of the island and Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell. On Malta, the Arab administration stayed in place. Roman Catholicism was now firmly established, though Eastern Christianity, prominent under the Byzantines, remained significant even in the Islamic period.

  Many Muslims chose exile after the conquest. Among them were the poets Abu Al Hasan Al Balnubi and Ibn Hamdis, who wrote verse about their banishment.

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• 8. Exile and Echoes

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  Those who stayed in Sicily lived confined to an inner territory of western Sicily, stretching from Palermo to Agrigento. Under the Hohenstaufen rulers Henry VI and his son Frederick II, their presence became a constant problem. Frederick introduced many oppressive measures to please popes who feared Muslims so close to the Papal States. Sicilian Muslims rebelled, which brought organized resistance and systematic reprisals. Historians estimate that around 60,000 Muslims were expelled, which would be almost the entire Muslim population of the island. Most went to North Africa. Others were deported to mainland towns, including Lucera, Girifalco, Acerenza and Stornara.

  Some tried to return between 1224 and 1239, but in 1239 Frederick decided to deport all of them to Lucera. The final deportations came in the late 1240s. Known in Arabic as Lugerah, Lucera grew to between 15,000 and 20,000 people, and its name became Lucaera Saracenorum. The colony thrived for 75 years until Charles II of Naples sacked it in 1300. Its inhabitants were exiled or sold into slavery, and many found asylum in Albania across the Adriatic. Charles filled the city with Christians, chiefly Burgundian and Provencal soldiers and farmers. A first settlement of 140 Provencal families had arrived in 1273. Descendants of those colonists still speak a Franco-Provencal dialect in the villages of Faeto and Celle di San Vito.

  Later centuries brought smaller echoes. Under the Crown of Aragon, the Spanish Inquisition reached Sicily, and on the 11th of August 1506 it burned a convert named Olivieri de Mauro in an auto-da-fe. He was the only person the inquisition executed in Sicily under Ferdinand II. During Spanish rule, some Moriscos fled the Iberian inquisition for Sicily. Several attempts were made to rid the island of its formerly Muslim Moor population, but it is doubtful the order was carried out. Former Muslims were able to remain largely because the Duke of Osuna, installed as viceroy in Palermo, argued their case to the Spanish monarch in Madrid.

  A different Muslim power arrived at Otranto in 1480, when an Ottoman fleet landed nearby and captured the city and its fort. The remaining townspeople were massacred after refusing to convert. Pope Sixtus IV called for a crusade, and Ferdinand I of Naples assembled a large force that included troops of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. That army annihilated the Turks and recaptured Otranto in 1481. In 1537 the Ottoman admiral Barbarossa tried again and was repulsed. Raids on the south and west coasts continued into the 17th century. They struck Ischia in 1544, Pozzuoli and Castellamare in 1548, and Reggio in Calabria in 1594, where the cathedral was destroyed.

  The lasting legacy is mostly found in the western half of Sicily. Frederick II is said to have spoken Arabic along with Latin, Sicilian, German, French and Greek, and he employed several Muslim ministers. Arabic art and science remained influential in urban Sicily for two centuries after the Christian reconquest. Arabic words survive in the Sicilian dialect. So do place names, such as "Calata-" or "Calta-", from the Arabic qalat, meaning fortress. Caltanissetta takes its name from Qalat al-Nisa, the Fort of the Women.

  In 2024, Monnereau and colleagues analyzed burials at Segesta to see how Muslim and Christian communities interacted. Their results suggest the Christians remained genetically distinct from the Muslims while following a substantially similar diet. The authors suggest that the two communities may have followed endogamy rules.

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