Syracuse was again devastated. Then, from 827 to 965, the Saracens gradually seize the whole island. In 827 Ziyādatullah ibn Aglab, Emir of Africa under the Khalif Abdullah al Ma'mūn (at Bagdad), sent his general, Asad ibn Furāt, Ķādi of Kairowān, with an army to Sicily. In 827 Asad took Agrigentum, in 831 Panormus, in 842 Messana, in 869 Malta, in 878 Syracuse. Finally, by 963, the Saracens have taken Tauromenium and occupy the whole of Sicily.
Meanwhile their fleets attack the coast of Italy. In 846 they sail up the Tiber and lay waste the suburbs of Rome. In 848 they seize Tarentum, then Bari and other places on the mainland. But they did not stay long in Italy. The two Emperors, Basil I (867-886), in the East, and Louis II (855-875), in the West, for once made alliance against the common foe. Basil supplied a fleet, and Lewis an army. In 872 the Moslems are defeated in a great sea battle; in 875 Bari is taken from them, and so they lose all their conquests in Italy. In the eleventh century a valiant Greek general, George Maniakes, conquered back Messana, Syracuse, and the eastern part of Sicily. However, these were again lost. When the Normans came in the end of the eleventh century Sicily was in Moslem hands, though they had lost all they ever held in Italy.
But meanwhile these savage enemies of Christendom had become in Sicily fairly inoffensive neighbours. Since the year 969 Egypt had been conquered by a new line of Khalifs, the Fatimides. The Emirs of Sicily renounced the Fatimide authority and so became practically independent princes; though I suppose they admitted a nominal authority of the Abbaside Khalif at Bagdad and prayed for him in their mosques.
The Moslems of Sicily then became peaceful traders between Italy and Africa. They were tolerant to Christians, bartered on friendly terms with the Christians of the mainland, and evolved a very splendid civilization in Sicily, so that their capital Palermo[1] rivalled Cordova. When the Normans came, the Moslems were no longer a danger to their neighbours.
Now we must see what the Empire was doing while it was losing so many provinces. In the first place, we must remember that Southern Italy and Sicily, before the Norman conquest, in as far as these parts were not lost to the Lombards or Saracens, remained part of the Roman Empire of the East.
- ↑ Palermo (Panormus) in Arabic is Balaram; Girgenti (Ἀχράγας, Agrigentum) is Gurgunt; Messana (Messina) is Massin; Syracuse is Sarakūsa; Tarentum (Taranto) is Tārant. From now on we may perhaps best call these places by their modern Italian names.
