history of the expansion of the Saracens, for the conquest of Sicily is connected in the most intimate way with the occupation of Northern Africa, and could only succeed after the conditions in the latter territory had somewhat improved. It is the same movement which took the Saracens across the Straits of Gibraltar. The subsequent advance of the world of Islām against Eastern Europe and the occupation of Constantinople by the Turks are in no way connected with the original movement as described here; the events now related below are the last ramification of the Arabian exodus.
As Michele Amari says in his classical work on the Muslims in Sicily, only a glance at the map is needed to shew that Sicily must be involved in continuous war with the Saracens after their occupation of Africa. And yet this same great historian represents the first naval expedition against Sicily not as starting from Africa but from Syria, and that too at a time when the subsequent Caliph Mu'āwiya was still governor of Syria. The strongly contradictory reports about this event may most easily be reconciled by regarding the first appearance of an Arabian fleet in Sicily as taking place under the Caliphate of Mu'āwiya, and connecting it with the expedition of his African governor, Mu'āwiya ibn Ḥudaij, against the Byzantines (664). Arabian tradition also accepts this Ibn Ḥudaij as the leader. It is quite probable that he himself never saw Sicily, but that the raid was made under his orders by his representative, 'Abdallāh ibn Ḳais. It is however quite certain that this naval expedition did not start from Syria but from the Pentapolis (Baṛka); the Syrian fleet had opportunities of booty nearer home; of the Pentapolis however we learn from the papyri that it was an important naval base in the seventh century, and here the fleet operating in the west received recruits from the fleets coming from Egypt. This opportunity serves to point out once again that, with the exception of special occasions, the regular war of the Arabs against the Byzantines consisted of individual summer campaigns, which bore the name κοῦρσοι and took place by water or on land. From this old custom piracy, that terrible scourge of the western Mediterranean, was developed in course of time as the great kingdoms became split up into small states, and the name Corsair is also etymologically related to the word κοῦρσον. The despatch of the fleet by Ibn Ḥudaij was such a κοῦρσον. The booty consisted of captive women and church treasures, images, which according to the Arabian historians Mu'āwiya endeavoured to sell for gold as quickly as possible among the idol-worshipping Indians.
Just as this first expedition against Sicily was connected with the occupation of Northern Africa, so we must not disconnect the occasional raids of the following decades from the ever-increasing use of the fleet in the western seat of war. It can therefore cause no surprise that during the régime of the great pacificators of the Berbers, i.e. under Ḥassan and Mūsā, war was waged on Sicily more frequently.
