Fatimid Rule

The early 900s saw a momentous movement arise in North Africa that would affect Muslims throughout the Islamic world. In 909, a claimed descendant of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, Abdullah al-Mahdi, declared himself Imam of the Isma’ili Shi’a community and the rightful leader of the Muslim world. Using a network of informants and proselytizers across North Africa and playing off of Amazigh discontent with Arabs, he quickly consolidated power and captured Qayrawan, overthrowing the Aghlabid Dynasty.

Since its inception, the emirate of Sicily had been tied to North Africa’s government, and the local leaders recognized that this would probably have to continue even with the Shi’a Fatimids. A representative chosen by Sicily’s elite attempted to meet with the Fatimid leader to secure Sicily’s relative autonomy, but was imprisoned in North Africa. In his place, al-Mahdi sent a Shi’i governor and qadi to rule over the island in the name of the Imam.

With Sicily’s reputation of rebelliousness, the new Fatimid administration enacted heavy-handed policies meant to subdue the province. The attempt at direct control, coupled with a new tax, the khums, which decreed that 1/5th of all earnings were to be forwarded directly to the Fatimid Imam, led to widespread opposition by the Sunni population and the almost immediate overthrow of the first Fatimid governor.

A subsequent rebellion in 913 entirely rid the island of Fatimid domination for a few years, but was brutally suppressed by the Fatimids in 918. Another revolt began in 937 in Agrigento and was supported by Muslim communities across the island starting in 939. A Fatimid expedition put down this revolt, massacring towns which were then repopulated by new immigrants from North Africa who were more loyal to the Fatimid government.

In an attempt to solidify their control over the island, the Fatimids appointed al-Hasan al-Kalbi, a military governor loyal to the Fatimid Imam, as governor of the island in 964. He would inaugurate a dynasty on the island, where his descendants would rule under Fatimid authority for the next hundred years.

While the era of the Kalbid Dynasty in Sicily saw the conquest of the last remaining Christian outposts, ongoing conflict on the island did not cease. Fatimid repression of Sunni Islam, to which the vast majority of the island’s Muslims adhered, exacerbated tensions, while conflict between native Sicilian Muslims and North African Arabs and Amazigh immigrants caused a major social divide.

Militarily, the Kalbid Dynasty saw the waning of Sicily’s power in the central Mediterranean. By the early 1000s, Kalbid emirs were not inclined to continue raids against Byzantine outposts on the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. Furthermore, the populace itself became more sedentary, with numerous men seeking exemptions to avoid military conscription.

The Norman Conquest and the Fall of Muslim Sicily

The early 11th century saw the imposition of new taxes on Sicily’s Muslims by the Kalbid emir al-Akhal meant to strengthen the island as an independent polity that can manage its own defense. Since the Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 969, the bulk of North Africa’s naval and military power shifted to the eastern Mediterranean, leaving Sicily vulnerable to Byzantine attack.

The new taxes, coupled with pre-existing tensions between the island’s population and its Fatimid/Kalbid rulers, caused a group of Sicilian notables to seek the help of the newly-independent Zirid Dynasty of Tunisia. In 1036 a Zirid force crossed from North Africa to Sicily and quickly took over Palermo and killed al-Akhal.

The Zirids may have wanted to bring the island under their own control, much like the Aghlabids two centuries earlier. Fears of North African domination caused Palermo’s residents to revolt against their new Zirid governors and force the expedition back to Tunisia not long after it arrived on the island.

The church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti in Palermo, Sicily. It operated as a masjid during the era of Muslim Sicily.

At this point, control of the island entered a period of decentralization, as provinces, led by military leaders, declared their independence in the absence of a central government on the island. Much like the Ta’ifa Period of al-Andalus, ethnic, political, and economic rivalries divided the region’s Muslims into competing factions.

Another similarity to the Andalusian model was the arrival on the scene of powerful Christian kingdoms eager to take advantage of Muslim disunity. The Normans, a dynasty originally from Northern Europe that was famed for its military ability (as evidenced by their conquest of England in 1066) ruled over southern Italy and took the opportunity to invade the island in 1052. A Zirid attempt to defend the island never materialized due to their preoccupation with tribal wars in North Africa, coupled with the determination of the Sicilian Muslims to not be ruled by a North African power.

By 1065, most of the island was under Norman control. Palermo fell in 1072, Syracuse followed in 1085 (incidentally the same year the Andalusian city of Toledo fell to Castile), and the final outpost of Islamic control in Sicily, the southern coastal city of Noto, fell in 1090.

Like in al-Andalus, a Muslim population (it’s likely the majority of the island followed Islam by the time of the Norman conquest) continued to live under Christian rule. Treatment of the Muslim population was dependent on the aims and temperament of the Norman king in power at the time. The reign of Roger II from 1130 to 1154 was particularly tolerant. It was during his reign that the great geographer al-Idrisi completed his world atlas known as Tabula Rogeriana.

Regardless, thousands of Muslims chose voluntary migration to Muslim lands over continuing to live under Norman Christian control. Meanwhile, the ongoing Crusades in the Levant, coupled with sporadic Muslim revolts in Sicily worsened relations between Muslims and Christians throughout Europe. In 1189, Palermo’s Muslims were massacred and in 1199, Pope Innocent III declared Muslims in Sicily to be “hostile elements” to the state. Numerous forced and self-imposed exiles continued during the 12th and 13th centuries, and in 1266 the last Muslims were forced from the island, ending over 400 years of Islam in Sicily.

First published at Lost Islamic history.com