Where Three Worlds Met: Sicily in the Early Medieval Mediterranean by Sarah Davis-Secord

Author:Sarah Davis-Secord [Davis-Secord, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2017-05-15T07:00:00+00:00

Sicily’s Connections with the Wider Mediterranean Region

The multitude of economic records from Sicily’s Muslim centuries thus shows the island closely connected to the economies of Ifrīqiya and Egypt. However, compared with the frequency with which the trade triangle between Sicily, North Africa, and Egypt is depicted in the Geniza letters and fatwās, only limited information is available in the extant sources to illuminate the relationship of Islamic Sicily with the westernmost Islamic regions of al-Andalus and the Maghrib, with the eastern Mediterranean (outside of Egypt), or with Latin Europe.165 Some level of communication between Islamic Sicily and al-Andalus clearly took place, although the scarce evidence for these links makes it impossible to form a complete picture of the purposes and value of their relationship. Some data suggest that Muslim warriors from al-Andalus participated in the initial Aghlabid conquest of the island, and these efforts may have established connections that do not appear in the later sources. However, I have found no confirmation that Andalusī Muslims continued to arrive in Sicily to wage jihād into Christian southern Italy during the ninth or tenth centuries or that they maintained notable diplomatic or political relations with the island.

Some—though comparatively very few—pieces of evidence do suggest commercial links between Sicily and al-Andalus during these centuries.166 One ninth-century fatwā issued in Ifrīqiya by Yahya bin ʿUmar (b. al-Andalus 828, d. Ifrīqiya 901) demonstrates that commercial ties may have existed between the island and Spain, as this legal opinion uses the route from Sicily to al-Andalus as one example of cross-Mediterranean trade.167 The question to the jurist contains no specific details of an actual suit, but it involves issues similar to those found in other, more detailed cases: a group of partners who had hired a ship that was forced by the wind to stop short of the intended destination asked what fees were then due for the trip and whether they should have been adjusted. The jurist’s response presented several possible examples of commercial sea journeys, each with a different resolution to the dispute. The first instance cited is an open-sea journey, exemplified by the trip from Ifrīqiya to Sicily or from al-Andalus to Sicily, and the other example is a coastal voyage, like that from Egypt to Ifrīqiya. The use of a direct Spain–Sicily voyage as a juristic example demonstrates that the trip was theoretically possible, and perhaps more common than we can see, in the ninth century.168

The jurist Ibn Siblūn was responsible for the decision in a case that provides an actual piece of evidence for commercial travel from Sicily to al-Andalus.169 The fatwā in question cites a ship that had been contracted to transport goods from Sicily to al-Andalus during the safe season for sailing the Mediterranean, but the ship only made it to the North African coast before opposing winds halted the journey. The navigable season then ended, and a disagreement resulted about the status of the contract, which had not been fulfilled. The ship’s owner wished to be absolved of

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