In seguito alle conquiste islamiche, il Mediterraneo diventò un fluido spazio di confine tra società musulmane e cristiane, contrassegnato da continui contatti e conflitti, intrecci e scambi, trasformazioni e tensioni.
Questo volume a più voci si propone di affrontare il tema del delicato passaggio che conduce dalla guerra di conquista islamica (ǧihād) alla creazione di strutture amministrative nei territori assoggettati, analizzando anche vari aspetti delle complesse dinamiche a esso inerenti.
Si prendono in esame alcuni importanti contesti mediterranei tra il VII e l’XI secolo: l’Egitto, il Maghreb, l’Andalusia, la Francia e l’Italia meridionale, le grandi isole. Lo scopo è quello di comprendere ancora meglio alcuni sviluppi e impatti dell’espansione musulmana, di affrontare le problematiche legate alla scarsità e all’interpretazione delle fonti e, non da ultimo, di invitare a guardare oltre l’orizzonte della propria disciplina.
L’Apocalypse de Samuel de Qalamūn et la domination des Hagaréens
Samir Khalil Samir
The Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalamūn and the Domination of the Hagarenes
According to tradition, the invasion of Egypt by the Arabs must have
been a peaceful conquest and the Copts must have welcomed the invaders
as liberators. However, the classical work of A.J. Butler, The Arab Conquest
of Egypt, adheres to a less conciliatory vision and emphasises instead
the clash, military as well as religious and cultural, between the conquerors
and the conquered. Unfortunately, there are no detailed studies that could
formulate a clear and documented judgment on these events. In an effort to
help bridge this gap we present here a document (survived only in Arabic)
of the original Coptic text called “Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalamūn”
(10th/11th century AD). It describes a dramatic cultural situation: the
Copts are not aware of their language and have adopted Arabic; they no
longer know anything of their religion, but are influenced by the Muslims.
They take Muslim names, customs and traditions, and their sinful behaviour.
They don’t take part in fasting and don’t practice Christian prayer.
Samuel suggests a return to the Coptic cultural identity, starting with the
language.
Dalla guerra navale alla conquista delle grandi isole del Mediterraneo. Cipro, Rodi, Creta
Marco Di Branco
From the Naval War to the Conquest of the Great Mediterranean Islands.
Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete
In this essay the main stages of the Islamic conquest of Cyprus, Rhodes
and Crete are analysed, highlighting how, in such circumstances, the Mus194
“Guerra santa” e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo
lim raids played a fundamental role as a prelude to military occupation,
although many scholars often mistakenly consider them simple acts of piracy
without a clear strategy. Furthermore, attention will be drawn to the
first phases after the conquest and, in particular, to the treaties that sanction
the so-called «condominium» in Cyprus, which was a kind of crystallisation
of what was assumed to be a fairly common situation in the period of
the great Arab conquests and that was essentially due to the temporary balance
of power relations between Byzantium and the Muslims.
From //ǧihād// to //diwān// in two providential histories of Hispania/al-Andalus
Ann Christys
From ǧihād to diwān in two providential histories of Hispania/al-Andalus
This paper examines two of the earliest histories of the conquest, one
written in Latin and the other in Arabic, which offer variant perspectives.
The author of the so-called Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 was writing for an
audience who remembered the second wave of Muslim settlement in the
740s. The chronicler’s viewpoint is Christian, but it is not parochial, and
locates his history of Hispania within the wider Mediterranean world. The
brief account of the conquest in Ibn Ḥabīb’s universal History, written a
century later, looks less promising, being mainly a collection of stories
about the Table of Solomon and other wonders that the conquerors are said
to have found in al-Andalus. Yet Ibn Ḥabīb was also a legal scholar who
left judgements on ǧihād that help us to understand his perspective on the
transition to Islamic rule.
Tra minoranze e periferie. Prolegomeni a un’indagine sui cristiani arabizzati di Sicilia
Giuseppe Mandalà
Between minorities and peripheries. Prolegomena for a study on Arabised
Christians in Sicily
In the last decades, interest in the history of medieval Sicily has grown
thanks to the publication of essays on the Arab-Islamic element of the Norman
and Swabian periods (12th-13th century). Our understanding of the language,
social and cultural life of Sicilian Muslims has gained much from a
huge amount of material conserved in Sicilian archives. Through the documentary
evidence produced by the trilingual administration (Arabic, Greek
and Latin), the island is placed within a Mediterranean context that reveals
its close ties with the Islamic world of that age. Nevertheless, after Michele
Amari (1806-1889), the great historian of the Muslims of Sicily, the existence
of a Siculo-Arabic period has been neglected (827-1091). Indeed,
new sources still need to be accurately defined as new documents are still
coming to light. This will hopefully reveal unexpected glimpses into the
history of medieval Sicily. This paper is part of a trend of renewed interest
in the study of Islamic Sicily; it opens new perspectives on interreligious
relationships between Muslims/Jews and Christians during the Islamic
period.
Terra di conquista? I musulmani in Italia meridionale nell’epoca aghlabita (184/800-269/909)
Marco di Branco, Kordula Wolf
Land of Conquest? Muslims in Southern Italy in the Aghlabid Age (184/800-
269/909)
Starting with a new examination of the dossier about the ǧihād declared
and led by the Aghlabid amīr Ibrāhīm II in 289/902, this paper analyses
Aghlabid policy in the “great Land” (Al-arḍ al-kabīra), i.e. on the Italian
mainland, from its foundation to the fall of the dynasty. Avoiding the
reductive interpretations of modern historiography, this investigation sheds
light on the expansionist aims of Ibrāhīm II concerning southern Italy:
these aims were not at all the result of an impromptu infatuation, but constituted
a permanent feature of the Aghlabid strategy, at least since the fall
of the Emirate of Bari (871), which was followed by the creation of a wālī
’l-arḍ al-kabīrah, intended to oversee political and military interests of the
dynasty in southern Italy. The central topics of this essay are also the problem
of the definition of ǧihād in the Aghlabid age, the question of the formation
of “emirates” on the Italian mainland and the issues involving
agreements, treaties, contracts, slaves and captivi.
«In locis qui sunt Fraxeneto vicina». Il mito dei Saraceni fra Provenza e Italia occidentale
Aldo A. Settia
«In locis qui sunt Fraxeneto vicina». Real and alleged Saracens between
Provence and Italy
We can often observe in the medieval documents (and we provide here
an important example) the tendency to manipulate the destruction by the
Saracens for political purposes. It is no wonder then that the historical reconstructions,
made centuries later on the basis of alleged folk traditions of
epic-literary origin, have greatly amplified, in time and space, the effects of
“Guerra santa” e conquiste islamiche nel Mediterraneo
the damage caused by the Saracen raids. Even very important scholars assigned
to these traditions give them more consideration than they deserve,
leading one to believe that the Saracens of Fraxinetumintroduced the great
values of Islamic culture to the countries affected by them, while no evidence
of this was found. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that
Fraxinetum was a simple haunt of pirates who acted on behalf of the Caliphs
of Córdoba and who abandoned it to itself when they believed that it
was no longer useful to their political goals in the Western Mediterranean.