Palermo is the largest city in Sicily and the capital of the island. It was a destination for the ships of southern conquerors.

Palermo and its capital are not as prominent in the Arab-Islamic imagination as ‘Seville’ or ‘Granada’ The city was the birthplace of the Aghlabids - the Arab rulers of Tunisia in the ninth century AD - who launched the largest campaign against the Byzantine peninsula in the middle of the century.