Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The End of Muslim Sicily

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Norman Kings of Sicily and the Rise of the Anti-Islamic Critique

  • 528 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the dramatic changes in the lives of Sicilian Muslims at the end of the twelfth century and the transformation of their portrayal in Latin sources. Birk traces the ways in which a series of dynastic crises led to a reemergence of Christian mob violence against Muslims. He shows that Sicilian rulers, nonetheless, assumed that Muslims could serve as a symbol of their power if they could regain control over them. Birk then highlights Pope Innocent III’s argument that Markward of Anweiler’s association with Muslims made him an enemy of the church. Birk argues that this marks an innovation in the discourse surrounding Sicilian Muslims, as it was the first time that a writer presented Muslim service as negative, rather than symbolic of royal power.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

Primary Sources

  • Alberic of Three Fountains. 1874. Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium. In MGH SS, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, vol. 23, 631–950. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Aulici Haniani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ambroise, and Gaston Paris. 1897. L’estoire de la guerre sainte histoire en vers de la troisième croisade (1190–1192). Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France ser. 40. Paris: Imprimerie nationale.

    Google Scholar 

  • Annibale de Leo, and Gennaro Maria Monti. 1940. Codice diplomatico Brindisino. Vecchi: Trani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnold. 1868. Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum. In MGH SS rer. Germ, ed. J.M. Lappenberg and Georg Heinrich Pertz, vol. 14. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Belgrano, Luigi Tommaso, and Cesare Imperiale di Sant’Angelo. 1902. Annales Ianuenses Otoboni Scribae. In Annali genovesi di Caffaro e de’suoi continuatori, vol. 2. Genoa: Tip. del R. Istituto sordo-muti.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collura, Paolo, ed. 1961. Le più antiche carte dell’Archivio capitolare di Agrigento (1092–1282). Palermo: Manfredi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cusa, Salvatore. 1868. I diplomi greci ed arabi di Sicilia. Cologne: Böhlau.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falcandus, Hugo. 1897. La historia o liber de regno Sicilie e la Epistola ad Petrum Panormitanae ecclesiae Thesaurarium, ed. Giovanni B. Siragusa. FSI. Rome: Forzani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garufi, Carlo Alberto. 1899. I documenti inediti dell’epoca normanna in Sicilia. Palermo: Lo Statuto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gress-Wright, David Richard. 1981. The Gesta Innocentii III: Text, Introduction and Commentary. PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huillard-Bréholles, Jean-Louis Alphonse, and Honoré Théodoric Paul Joseph D’Albert de Luynes, eds. 1852. Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi sive constitutiones, privilegia, mandata, instrumenta quae supersunt istius imperatoris et filiorum ejus: accedunt epistolae paparum et documenta varia. 6 vols. Parisiis: Plon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Innocent III. 1964. Die Register Innocenz’ III, ed. Othmar Hageneder, 10 vols. Vienna: H. Böhlaus Nachf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pertz, Georg Heinrich, ed. 1861. Annales Coloniensis Maximi. In MGH SS, vol. 17, 723–847. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Aulici Haniani.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, ed. 1866. Annales Ceccanenses. In MGH SS, vol. 19, 275–302. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Aulici Haniani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peter of Eboli. 1994. In Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern: eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. Theo Kölzer Marlis Stähli and Gereon Becht-Jördens. Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Il “De balneis Puteolanis” di Pietro da Eboli: realtà e simbolo nella tradizione figurata, ed. Silvia Maddalo. Biblioteca apostolica vaticana.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. In Book in honor of Augustus (Liber ad honorem Augusti), ed. Gwenyth Hood. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richard of San Germano. 1937. Ryccardi de Sancto Germano, notarii, Chronica. In MGH SS rer. Germ, 2nd ed., ed. Carlo Alberto Garufi. Bologna: N. Zanichelli.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roger of Howden. 1868. Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smidt, Wilhelm, ed. 1934. Annales Casinenses ex annalibus Montis Casini antiquis excerpti. In MGH SS, vol. 30, part 2, 1385–1429. Leipzig: Impensis Karoli W. Hiersemann

    Google Scholar 

  • Stubbs, William, ed. 1864. Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I. Vol. 1. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stürner, Wolfgang, ed. 2004. Breve chronicon de rebus Siculis. In MGH SS rer. Germ. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waitz, Georg, ed. 1880. Chronica regia coloniensis. In MGH SS rer. Germ., vol. 18. Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani.

    Google Scholar 

Secondary Sources

  • Abulafia, David. 1975. Henry Count of Malta and His Mediterranean Activities. In Medieval Malta: Studies on Malta Before the Knights, ed. Anthony Luttrell. London: The British School at Rome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abulafia, David. 1994. The Kingdom of Sicily and the Origins of the Political Crusade. In Società, Instituzioni, Spiritualità: Studi in Onore Di Cinzio Violante, vol. 1, 65–78. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’alto Medioevo.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996. Monarchs and Minorities in the Christian Western Mediterranean around 1300: Lucera and Its Analogues. In Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl, 234–263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolton, Brenda. 1991. Too Important to Neglect: The Gesta Innocentii III. In Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages Essays Presented to John Taylor, ed. Ian Wood and Graham A. Loud, 87–99. London: Hambledon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brühl, Carlrichard. 1994. L’itinerario italiano dell’imperatore, 1220–1250. In Federico II e le città italiane, ed. Pierre Toubert and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, 33–47. Palermo: Selerio.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chalandon, Ferdinand. 1907. Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols. Paris: Picard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cipollone, Giulio. 1999. Innocent III and the Saracens: Between Rejection and Collaboration. In Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John C. Moore and Brenda Bolton, 3–24. Brookfield: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clementi, Dione. 1967. The Relations Between the Papacy, the Western Roman Empire and the Emergent Kingdom of Sicily and South Italy (1050–1156). BISIME 80: 191–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Constable, Olivia Remie. 1997. Cross-Cultural Contracts: Sales of Land Between Christians and Muslims in 12th-Century Palermo. Studiaislamica Studia Islamica 85: 67–84.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Alessandro, Vincenzo. 1989. Servi e liberi. In Uomo e ambiente nel Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo: atti delle ottave Giornate normanno-sveve, Bari, 20-23 ottobre 1987, ed. Giosuè Musca, 293–317. Bari: Dedalo.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Angelo, Franco. 1975. La monetazione di Muhammad ibn Abbad emiro ribelle a Federico II di Sicilia. Studi magrebini 7: 149–153.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1995. La circolazione della moneta minuta fatimita. In Tunisia Sicilia: incontro di due culture, ed. Gabriella D’Agostino, 65–73. Palermo: Università di Palermo. Facoltà di lettere e filosofia. Servizio museografico.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flori, Jean. 2006. Richard the Lionheart: King and Knight. Trans. Birrell Jean. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillingham, John. 1973. The Life and Times of Richard I. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999. Richard I. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grierson, Philip, and Lucia Travaini. 1998. Medieval European Coinage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guglielmino, Riccardo. 1992. Entella. La necropolis A. Nuovi dati. In Giornate internazionali di studi sull’area elima: Gibellina, 19–22 settembre 1991: atti, vol. 1, 371–378. Pisa: Gibellina.

    Google Scholar 

  • Housley, Norman. 1982. The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades Against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isler, Hans Peter. 1992. Gli arabi a Monte Iato. In Dagli scavi di Monte vago e di Rocca d’Entella un contributo di conoscenze per la Storia dei Musulmani dela Valle del Belice dal X al XIII secolo, ed. Giuseppe Castellana, 105–125. Agrigento: Sarcuto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jamison, Evelyn M. 1957. Admiral Eugenius of Sicily, His Life and Work, and the Authorship of the Epistola Ad Petrum, and the Historia Hugonis Falcandi Siculi. London: British Academy by Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johns, Jeremy. 1983. Monte Guastanella. Un insediamento musulmano nell’ Agrigento. Sicilia archeologica 51: 33–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1993. Entella nelle fonti arabe. In Alla ricerca di Entella, ed. Giuseppe Nenci, 61–91. Pisa: Scuola normale superiore di Pisa, Laboratorio di topografia storico-archeologica del mondo antico.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordan, Karl. 1986. Henry the Lion: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennan, Elizabeth. 1971. Innocent III and the First Political Crusade: A Comment on the Limitations of Papal Power. Traditio 27: 231–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loud, Graham A. 2002. The Papacy and the Rulers of Southern Italy. In The Society of Norman Italy, ed. Graham A. Loud and Alex Metcalfe, 151–184. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. The Chancery and Charters of the Kings of Sicily (1130–1212). English Historical Review 124(509): 779–810.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loud, Graham A., and Thomas E.J. Wiedemann. 1998. The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by “Hugo Falcandus,” 1154–69. New York: Manchester University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mallette, Karla. 2005. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–1250: A Literary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Matthew, Donald. 1992. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Maurici, Ferdinando. 1987. L’emirato sulle montagne: note per una storia della resistenza musulmana in Sicilia nell’età di Federico II di Svevia. Palermo: Centro di documentazione e ricerca per la Sicilia antica “Paolo Orsi”.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. uno stato musulmano nell’Europa christiana del XII secolo: l’emiro siciliano di Mohammed Ibn Abbad. Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia 18: 257–280.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ménager, Léon-Robert. 1960. Amiratus “Amêras”: l’Emirat et les origines de l’amirauté, XI-XIIIe siècles. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metcalfe, Alex. 2009. The Muslims of Medieval Italy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, John C. 2003. Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216) to Root Up and to Plant. Leiden: Brill. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10090475

  • Nicholson, Helen J. 1997. Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi. Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peters, Edward. 1999. Lotario Dei Segni Becomes Pope Innocent III: The Man and the Pope. In Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John C. Moore and Brenda Bolton, 3–24. Brookfield: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pezzini, Elena. 2013. Palermo in the 12th Century: Transformations in Forma Urbis. In A Companion to Medieval Palermo: The History of a Mediterranean City from 600 to 1500, ed. Annliese Nef, 195–232. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Powell, James M. 1999a. Frederick II and the Rebellion of the Muslims of Sicily 1220–1224. In Uluslararası Haçlı Seferleri Sempozyumu: 23–25 Haziran 1997, İstanbul. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999b. Innocent II and Petrus Beneventanus: Reconstructing a Career at the Papal Curia. In Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John C. Moore and Brenda Bolton, 51–62. Brookfield: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Innocent III: The Making of an Image. In Innocenzo III: Urbs et Orbis: Atti Del Congresso Internazionale : Roma, 9-15 Settembre 1998, ed. Andrea Sommerlechner, 1363–1373. Rome: Società romana di storia patria: Istituto Storico italiano per il Medio Evo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sayers, Jane E. 1994. Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt-Chazan, Mireille. 1984. Aubri de Trois-Fontaines, un historien entre la France et l’Empire. Annales de l’Est 36: 163–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simonsohn, Shlomo. 2011. Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Jews in Sicily. Leiden: Brill.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Siragusa, Giovanni Battista. 1906. Prefazione. In Liber ad honorem Augusti di Pietro da Eboli secondo il cod. 120 della Biblioteca civica di Berna. Rome: Forzani e C. tipografi del Senato.

    Google Scholar 

  • Staccioli, Giuseppe, and Mario Cassar. 2012. L’ultima città musulmana: Lucera. Bari: Caratterimobili.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stähli, Marlis. 1994. Petrus de Ebulos ‘Unvollendete’ – Einie Handschrift mit Räseln. In Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern: eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. Gereon Becht-Jördens and Theo Kölzer. Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanton, Charles. 2011. Norman Naval Operations in the Mediterranean. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takayama, Hiroshi. 1993. The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Julie. 2003. Muslims in Medieval Italy: The Colony at Lucera. Lanham: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Cleve, Thomas Curtis. 1937. Markward of Anweiler and the Sicilian Regency: A Study of Hohenstaufen Policy in Sicily During the Minority of Frederick II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1972. The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Immutator Mundi. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smith College, Northampton, USA

    Joshua C. Birk

Authors
  1. Joshua C. Birk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Birk, J.C. (2016). The End of Muslim Sicily. In: Norman Kings of Sicily and the Rise of the Anti-Islamic Critique. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47042-9_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47042-9_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47041-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47042-9

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation