Three centuries in Sicily.. How did Islam enter Italy and why were Muslims defeated?

Click to listen

Sicily, a beautiful island in the Mediterranean, which politically belongs to Italy, was once part of the history of Islamic geography in its medieval era, and from this island Muslims were able to gradually penetrate towards the Italian south, to be close to Rome, the capital of the Catholic Papacy in the world It was collected for the first time in the history of the confrontation between the two sides, since the advent of Islam.

This Islamic presence in Sicily was exciting and strange in its beginning and end, and it lasted for a little more than two centuries. The Muslims, above settlement and reconstruction, were able to establish a civilization, and preserve a legacy that still bears witness to their presence to this day through several evidence and a thousand years after their departure. Why did Muslims enter the island of Sicily? And how did they face the mighty Byzantine power that was controlling the Mediterranean and its islands at that time? And what are the most important traces of them and evidence of their presence on this rich volcanic island?

The sun of the first century AH was not completed until the Muslims conquered the entire countries of North Africa and Andalusia, as well as the Levant and Egypt, and the Islamic-Byzantine confrontation became stronger than before. The Romans retreated from the Levant to Anatolia, and from North Africa and Andalusia to the depth of the European continent, and the Mediterranean became The arena of confrontation and constant fighting, and the continuous revenge of the Byzantine forces on the coastal cities and the Islamic fleets, which the Muslims realized the necessity of establishing strong fleets and ports on their long coasts.

The Abbasids realized the seriousness of these raids, so they kept the House of Maritime Industry, which was founded by the Umayyads in the city of Tyre, and then transferred it to the city of Acre in the year 247 AH / 681 AD. These skirmishes continued between the two sides until the Abbasids, in a moment of Byzantine weakness, were able to seize for a period of time the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Then the island of Crete later, and the maritime observation points on the coast of the Levant increased until the city of Tarsus became one of the offensive military ports for the Islamic naval forces. The Tulunids took advantage of these ports and the role of the maritime industry in both Levant and Egypt and worked to strengthen them and increase their fleets[1].

This was in the Levant and Egypt, but in North Africa, the Islamic-Byzantine confrontation did not stop since the moments of the first Islamic conquests. The first naval campaigns went out on the island of Sicily and Sardinia, which is close to it, in the year 44 AH / 664 AD, and its launch was from the city of Cyrenaica, whose fleet was receiving its supplies And his support from Egypt, and this campaign was followed by a number of other campaigns as in the year 84 AH and the year 92 AH, although the fleeting naval campaigns did not aim to seize and stay in Sicily.

The first attempts to establish a house for the manufacture of warships in Tunisia were at the hands of its then governor, Musa bin Nasir, and that was in the year 84 AH / 703 AD, and he was one of the important leaders of the Andalusian conquest later. The construction of a hundred boats, and there are other narrations that indicate that the governor, Hassan bin Numan, was the one who built this military arsenal before the mandate of Musa bin Nusair.

Thus, Tunisia became a strategic naval center for Islamic fleets since the end of the first century AH, from which the invasions were going out against the Roman Byzantine presence in the Mediterranean. Musa bin Nasir sent the Tunisian fleet in the year 89 AH / 707 AD to attack the naval bases of the Romans on the islands near the Islamic possessions in North Africa , the Islamic fleet attacked the islands of Menorca and Mallorca near the coast of Spain, and it was not satisfied with this, but was able to annex them to Islamic sovereignty[2].

From that important moment in the history of the Islamic naval forces, Muslims realized the strategic and economic importance of the island of Qusra, near the Tunisian coast and located in the middle of the distance with Sicily. Muslim geographers and travelers praised the excellent location of this island; Because it is "in front of Africa near Tunisia, and between it and Sicily there is a stream, and figs and cotton are brought from it. Musa bin Nasir in the year 88 AH / 707 AD decided to seize this island and take it as a forward base for his fleet in repelling the attacks of the Byzantines, and he assigned to this task one of his most skilled leaders He is Abd al-Malik ibn Qatan al-Fihri, and Abd al-Malik succeeded in his mission with great success, and was able to annex the island of Qusra, near Sicily, to an African state or Tunisia” [3].

From Qusra, and under the Umayyad rule and the early Abbasid caliphs before Harun al-Rashid, fleets and warships went out to raid the island of Sicily, and were able to inflict sabotage and destruction with the Roman fleet anchored in its ports, and day after day the Muslims were increasing experience with this island, its locations, and its importance in the sea The Mediterranean, and in deterring the Romans from raiding the coasts and Islamic cities.

In the year 184 AH / 800 AD, the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid issued his decision to appoint Ibrahim bin al-Aghlab al-Tamimi over the governorship of African “Tunisia”, and made it in his heels and his descendants after him, on the condition of political and financial dependency, to send the required abscess annually every year to Baghdad, and this decentralization policy that The Abbasids took it as a sign of great wisdom, by removing the burdens and burdens on the Abbasids while at the same time benefiting from these states, as long as they declared their subordination and allegiance to the Abbasid Caliph.

After a short period of assuming the reins of the state, Ibrahim bin Al-Aghlab was able to exclude competitors, revolutionaries, and those who disobeyed him to Iraq.

The Arabs and Berbers were subject to the tradition of the mandate, and they were condemned by obedience to Ibrahim bin Al-Aghlab, and he was a prince with a great deal of wisdom and political training. , and his state expanded until it reached Tripoli, west of “today’s western Libya”, and the state settled for him and his sons after him [4].

At the end of 201 AH/817 AD, Prince Ziada Allah bin Ibrahim bin Al-Aghlab ascended to the throne of the majority state in Africa. He was able to defeat them with the elements of the Sudanese "Zanj" divisions in his army, then he realized after that that heading towards conquests and invasion is the best way for his state, his army and the entire population, so he ordered from an early period of his mandate to prepare the fleet, mobilize the soldiers, and ordered its exit to Sardaniya Island near Sicily, which is On that day, it was affiliated with the Byzantines, who defeated them in several locations, and the fleet returned to victory amid loud celebrations in the capital of the Abbasid majority near Kairouan[5].

Ziyadat Allah ibn al-Aghlab was not ignorant of observing the current conditions in the Italian country. He learned in the year 212 AH/827 AD that the Emperor of Rome in Constantinople used a road named Constantine on the island of Sicily, and that this penguin who assumed political and religious leadership on the island appointed a skilled commander on the fleet named Femi, who immediately decided to invade the African coasts "Tunisia and its environs", and his raids succeeded in inflicting terror, seizing many spoils and capturing many, and Femi was able after that, following an internal dispute, to win the king of the island, but this leadership did not last for him due to the renewal of the armed opposition In front of him, which compelled him to turn to the Aghlabid Emir Ziadatullah for his help, promising him the king of the island of Sicily[6].

Ziyadat Allah al-Aghlabi and a group of senior scholars and people of solution and contract such as Imam Sahnoun, Judge Asad bin al-Furat and others had gathered to discuss the issue of the conquest and capture of Sicily. And eradicating the Muslims from it when they were weak, and the delay in the arrival of the supplies to them from Tunisia compared to Italy, and another group led by Ziada Allah and Judge Ibn al-Furat, who saw that this was a golden opportunity to crush the Byzantines and establish jihad and the subordination of the island to the Muslims, which is the strategic island in the Mediterranean.

In the end, the sway of Ziyadah Allah prevailed, and he made the leadership of the army and the fleet to Judge Asad bin Al-Furat, and the nobles of the Arabs, Berbers, Andalusians and the great men of science and African society joined them. They crushed its armies, drowned its fleets, and took over its most important cities, such as Mazara, Balata, and Qalouriya.

However, these conquests shook Constantinople, whose emperor sent tremendous military and naval support, and this support came to confront the Muslim forces that were besieging the city of Sarkoza in the heart of the island, and there a great military battle took place, in which the judge and mujahid Asad bin Al-Furat was martyred in the month of Rabi’ al-Awwal in the year 213 AH. /828 AD, and the Muslims were steadfast in their fight, and the supplies came to them from Ifriqiya in a huge fleet estimated at 300 ships, and after long months of fighting, hit and run, they were able to defeat the Byzantines, and seize one of the most important and oldest cities of the island, the city of Balram, which they entered in the month of Rajab in the year 216 AH / 831 AD.

Since that date, the Islamic conquests have continued throughout Sicily, and even starting from 220 AH/835 AD, the Islamic forces were able to set out to southern Italy, and besiege one of its major cities, "Naples", which caused a great shock in the Byzantine and Roman circles alike, as the presence expanded The Islamic movement in southern Italy until the seizure of a large part of the Italian coasts located on the Adriatic Sea[7].

During the era of the Aghlabid rule, the direction of the conquests in Sicily was from west to east, especially from the city of Mazar and Palermo, and the war was a debate for four years until the year 831 AD, and during the following ten years, ie from the year 831 AD to the year 841 AD, the Arabs tightened their grip on the Mazer Province, where they established their first settlements, and transferred slaves and peasants to work on their farms that supported their presence and economic prosperity on the island, and during the following eighteen years, i.e. from 841 AD to 859 AD / 226-242 AH, the Arabs redoubled their efforts to subjugate the Notos region Fertile, and after the year 860 AD/246 AH, they worked hard in the last stage to open the Damanish region, which they eventually succeeded in seizing in the year 902 AD/289 AH [8].

The majority state fell and the Fatimid Ubaids took over their territories in Ifriqiya with the ascension of the Mahdi to the throne since the year 297 AH / 338 AD, and the establishment of the new capital “Mahdia”, and when the situation was established for him, he sent to Sicily some of his governors to ensure its subordination, provided that the reception of the people of the island to these rulers was not like their predecessors Sunni majority.

The Shiites of the Fatimids and their exaggeration were a sufficient reason for their resistance, and the attempts to impose the Sicilians on their conditions, but the Fatimid Caliph al-Mahdi did not comply with them, and he sent a number of strong-hearted rulers to them;

Such as Salem bin Abi Rashid, and after him Khalil bin Ishaq, supported by large military forces;

Where she was able to crush all the revolutions on the island, so that Khalil bin Ishaq was proud of the large number of his dead from the Muslim inhabitants of Sicily, saying: “I killed a thousand thousand.” He says the many, and the less says: “One hundred thousand in that trip.” Then he said: “No, by God, but more.” He replied to him. One of the group said: O Abu Al-Abbas, for killing one person, you have enough for you” [9].

However, Sicily breathed a sigh of relief when Al-Hassan bin Ali bin Abi Al-Hussein came to it from the family of Banu Kilab in 336 AH. The people of the island grieved deeply for him, then ten governors of the island were succeeded by ten governors in a period of ninety-five years, during which I witnessed progress in urban life and in science and literature, as well as their continuous jihad in southern Italy and in resisting the ambitions of the Romans on the island. And Sicily rested in peace, and reaped the best fruits from it. One of the reasons for this calm was the preoccupation of the soldiers in most of the times with wars in southern Italy, and the loyalty of the Cynics in defending Sicily, and considering themselves independent and internally independent in the affairs of the island [10].

Nearly a century after the rule of the Kalbees, Sicily entered into a cycle of chaos, revolution and violence, and a number of revolutionaries appeared who wanted each one of them to rule the island or parts of it, at a time when the Fatimids turned to Cairo, and Africa became subject to revolutions, looting and loss, The people of Sicily lost their most important supporter of fuel and aid to the people of Tunisia when they sank into the quagmire of rebellion and murder.

The New Testament was similar to the era of the kings of the sects in Andalusia. Soon, each prince took a piece of the island, and the matter did not stop there.

As soon as two of the largest of these princes, Ibn Al-Tha’na and Ali bin Ni’mah, clashed, and when Ibn Al-Tha’ah was defeated, he sought the help of the Norman enemies who were ruling parts of central and southern Italy, so they answered the call, and took advantage of the Islamic fragmentation on the island, and they were able to enter it with great ease in the year 444 AH / 1053 AD [11];

The Islamic sovereignty over the island would be lost forever after a rule that lasted more than two centuries.

Under the Islamic rule, the island witnessed a civilized renaissance in all economic, cultural and urban fields. Muslims introduced many types of agriculture to Sicily, as they brought it lemons, oranges, reeds, rice, palms, cotton and papyrus, until agricultural methods arose in Sicily that fit its environment. It is called the Sicilian method of growing onions, for example, or the custom of the Sicilian people to grow cotton, or their own way of making grapes from sweet grape juice. And most people grow vegetables, and some types of Muslims have brought them to the island. Balram and its environs were full of orchards, embryos and mills on Wadi Abbas. The swampy lands near it were planted with Persian reeds and good sacks[12].

The island also witnessed a very active cultural and scientific movement. The famous traveler Ibn Hawqal, the author of the geographical encyclopedia “Picture of the Earth” during his visit to Sicily during the fourth century AH, transmitted an elaborate picture of the social and urban conditions of Sicily at that time, especially the city of Palermo, where he noted the large number of mosques and teachers And he saw that the number of mosques in Palermo at that time exceeded two hundred, and from the intensity of his surprise at this number, he confirmed that he had never seen such a number in any of the great countries, except Cordoba, the capital of Andalusia, which was famous at the time for the abundance of mosques [13].

The people of Sicily revered the teachers, and they saw them as “their notables, pulpits, jurists, collectors, authors of their fatwas and their righteousness, and by whom the lawful and unlawful are established, rulings are established, and testimonies are implemented, and they are writers and preachers” [14] as Ibn Hawqal says, and perhaps this veneration and exaggeration in learning and establishing mosques was due to the fact that the island A gap in a permanent confrontation with the Byzantine neighbors, the Italians, and other hostile Christian forces. The people of the island were keen on the Islamic cultural renaissance, and adherence to the principles of their religion and legislation that they saw achieved through the mosque and the teacher.

Despite the entry of the Christian Normans to the island and their seizure under the leadership of Roger I, and the sabotage of many Muslim villages, and the imposition of taxes on them, the Muslims, under its early rulers, enjoyed some freedom in worship, rituals and litigation, and contributed a large share in the political, economic, cultural and military affairs on the island. However, the migration of the Italian and French Lombards to the island turned the lives of Muslims into hell, as they were forced to lose their possessions from fertile agricultural lands[15].

In the state of Roger II, the same policy adopted by his father continued, and he involved many Muslim knights in the Norman army, and he did not care much about the Christianization of Muslims, and the pressures of the papacy in Rome, which accused him of collusion with Muslims, but many of his private guards were Muslims, and he brought in the geographer Al-Sharif Al-Idrisi gave him large sums of money to make the first silver hologram of the globe. Al-Idrisi gifted him his feat of geographer, "The Excursion of the Desire to Break Through the Horizons", in which Al-Idrisi praised King Roger II, describing him as "better than the king of the Romans, who expanded and captured, and directed matters according to his will." Concluding and breaking, and professing in his creed the religion of justice, and encompassing them with the veil of length and grace, and he carried out the causes of his kingdom in the best manner, and carried out the laws of his state on the best system” [16].

Roger II (networking sites)

However, the pressures of the papacy met their impact at the end of Roger’s rule, and this king acquiesced to these claims, and began to take a policy of Christianizing Muslims, and the decision to disarm Muslims in the era of his predecessor William I was the beginning of the true end of the Muslims on the island, they fell easy prey to the wrath of the Norman barons. And the Lombards, who massacred the palace officials of the Muslims, and then soon the massacres spread to the countryside and the lands, and then the big cities like Palermo, and the Muslims fled to the remote bushes and mountains, and they made several revolts against these injustices which William I could easily suppress.

The Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr Al-Balani, who visited the island in the last days of Islam and Muslims there during the time of King William II in the year 580 AH / 1185 AD, gave us horrific and painful scenes about the massacres, systematic eradication, forced Christianization, the prohibition of prayers, and the transformation of mosques into churches. And he saw that the Muslim community in Palermo was better off than others, but what bled his heart was that Sicilian Muslim man who offered them to take his young daughter away from this island that persecutes Muslims, and inflicts massacres on them, and takes care of her, then they marry her to whom they see as good Muslims. In Andalusia, it was a scene that made everyone cry, as Ibn Jubayr says[17].

Those were the last days of Islam in Sicily, and after that the massacres increased, and the Muslims became among the dead, the displaced and the evangelized, and the sun of Islam disappeared after more than two centuries of their entry into it under the leadership of the judge and jurist Asad bin Al-Furat, so that these events remain witness to this existence and its beginning, and that tragic fate And it's over!