The Emirate of Sicily

One of the extraordinary things about visiting Sicily is the rich medley of diverse influences that make up its heritage: Roman; Byzantine; Norman; Baroque; and, perhaps most remarkable of all, Arab. For Sicily in the 9th to 11th centuries was ruled by Saracens, who for 120 years controlled the whole island, the Emirate of Sicily. Under Arab rule, Palermo became one of the great Muslim cities of the Mediterranean region, vying with Cordoba and Cairo. It was the second-largest city in Europe, after Cordoba, in Spain. At that time the two biggest cities in Europe were both Muslim. It is said that Palermo boasted some 300 mosques. The mosques are gone, and the Muslims there now are recent arrivals. But the older Arab influence is still discernible, for example in the cooking, in which couscous is a staple. And it can be seen in the architecture of buildings commissioned by Christian rulers in the century or so after the end of Muslim rule, who admired the Arab culture they found there.

Arab rule in Sicily was brought to an end by a Norman conquest in the 1060s and 1070s, which returned the island to Christian control. But the Muslim presence remained for more than a century under Norman rule, and continued to exert a powerful influence on the island. The Normans adopted a policy of religious tolerance, allowing eastern-rite Christians, Muslims and Jews to practice their faith alongside the western, Roman variant of Christianity that they themselves professed. For a few decades, Sicily was a remarkable multi-ethnic, multi-faith land. The interaction of its different peoples spawned a unique architectural and artistic style known as Norman-Arab, combining Norman, Arab and Byzantine flavours.

Church of St John of the Hermits, Palermo

The Arab influence is evident in many medieval buildings in Palermo. The exterior of the 12th Century church of St John of the Hermits, close by the Palazzo dei Normanni, with its ochre domes looks thoroughly middle-eastern, although the arches in the interior are unmistakably Norman. The austere little church of San Cataldo, on the central Piazza Bellini, is also topped by trademark Saracen domes.

La Zisa Palace, Palermo

I was particularly struck by the former royal palace of La Zisa, now situated a short distance from the city centre, but in its day the centre of a park outside the city. The very name of the palace is derived from the Arabic, al aziz, ‘magnificent’. The interior decoration includes typically Arab features, with ornately carved niches familiar in Islamic architecture in North Africa and Spain. Down the middle of the central hall runs one of the gentle little fountains (not working when I visited) that lend such an ambiance of peacefulness in Arab architecture. Later Baroque flourishes jar a little, but do not destroy the effect, and seem in a way in keeping with the spirit of amalgamation of different styles that is at the heart of Sicily’s heritage. A short distance away is the La Cuba building, as it name implies, a large square edifice, that once formed part of the same park as La Zisa. It is in less good condition, and is open to the sky. But along the top of the walls can be seen the same ornate Arabic stone carving, in another example of the fusion of Norman and Arab styles.

Palatine Chapel, Palermo

Palermo’s greatest medieval jewel is surely the Palatine Chapel, in the Palazzo dei Normanni. The palace was the seat of the medieval Norman rulers and, much rebuilt, today houses Sicily’s regional government. The chapel itself, once the private chapel of Sicily’s rulers, remains as it was, an exquisite blend of Norman architectural forms, Byzantine frescoes, and typically Islamic motifs. Before the Arab conquest, Sicily had come under the eastern half of the Roman Empire, its strongest links were with Constantinople, many of its people were Greek, and it followed the eastern variant of Christianity. This Byzantine influence remained strong, and the frescoes of the Palatine Chapel are among the finest to be seen. As remarkable are the typically Islamic designs, most notably in the beautifully ornate ceiling which, if not for the crosses incorporated into it, could have adorned an Islamic building in North Africa. Yet with this fusion of diverse influences, the overall effect is harmonious. Another marvellous example of this harmonious fusion is the magnificent cathedral at Monreale, in the hills above Palermo.

Not only did Sicily’s Norman rulers employ Arab architects, but they had Arab poets at their court, and Arab soldiers in their armies. And while the court language was French, they spoke Arabic, and used Arabic as well as Latin, Greek and Hebrew in their communications with their diverse subjects. The royal coronation mantel included an inscription in Arabic. The Arab traveller Ibn Jubair, who visited Sicily a century after the Norman conquest, described the splendour of Palermo, and remarked that there were too many mosques to be counted. He was struck by how well Muslims were treated, that many government officials were Muslim and that they enjoyed the full confidence of the ruler.

12th century plaque in Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Arabic,

La Zisa Palace, Palermo

On the wall outside the Palatine Chapel is a carved inscription in Latin, Greek and Arabic. Originally, it would have come from a bell tower that once stood outside the chapel. The inscription celebrates a 12-Century water clock that was once there. The La Ziza palace contains an exhibition of medieval artefacts. Among them is a 12th Century plaque commemorating a notable lady, written in Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Arabic.

But sadly this remarkable example of medieval multiculturalism was not destined to survive. Even during the Norman period, many Muslims converted to Christianity, the religion of the rulers, just as many Christians had earlier converted to Islam under Arab rule. Muslims may have been tolerated under the Normans, but their position was always subordinate and dependent on royal protection. Following the end of Norman rule at the end of the 12th Century, Sicily became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and that protection was withdrawn. As the island was torn apart by fighting over the succession at the end of the 12th Century and the first years of the 13th, a Muslim rebellion took control of much its territory. In 1224 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, having defeated the Muslim rebels, decided to deport them to the Italian mainland, where a Muslim colony survived at Lucera until the end of the century.

As modern Europeans debate the merits or otherwise of globalisation and multiculturalism, and question whether the Christian and secular West can co-exist with Islam, it is worth recalling that these questions are not new, and that a thousand years ago cooperation and synthesis between different cultural traditions fostered things of beauty that continue to attest to the fact that antagonism between diverse cultures is not inevitable. Through tolerance and exchange in medieval Sicily there flowered a unique culture based on respect, sharing and the blending of different traditions. Medieval Sicily was an important junction for interaction and exchange between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and in its way, a kind of beacon. In the marvellous architecture it has bequeathed, it could also serve as an example today.

In the Doge's Palace: the glory and infamy of Venice

Walking through the Doge’s Palace in Venice, one marvels not only at the splendour of the Most Serene Republic, but at the sense of timelessness of a city whose greatness evaporated so suddenly, but left its monuments, its grandeur, its buildings in place, frozen in time, like an entire city transformed into a museum. Venice was not just an architectural, artistic and cultural marvel. It was the capital of an empire, at its height the greatest trading and naval power in the Mediterranean. It was well past the prime of its political power when revolutionary France kicked down the door in 1797. The republic which had survived untrammelled through a millennium of turmoil in Europe was gone, just like that. Perhaps the most poignant reminder of the suddenness of its demise is the coat of arms of the last Doge, the head of state of the republic, in the Shield Room, where the Doge held official receptions. On the wall in that room had been displayed the coat of arms of each Doge for the duration of his office. Since his exit, the arms of the last Doge, Lodovico Manin, have remained there, a sad memorial to a lost world, preserved now only as empty rooms, filled with fine artworks, but dead and gone.

Great Council chamber, Doge's Palace

I was especially struck by a series of paintings along one wall in the Great Council chamber, where the nobles of Venice once met to discuss the affairs of the republic. The paintings portray key events of the Fourth Crusade, at the beginning of the 13th Century, one of the most notable and most controversial episodes for the Republic. One of the paintings shows the conquest of Zadar, then the most important city on the Dalmatian coast. Zadar (Zara in Italian) had passed to Hungarian control a few years earlier, and Venice was determined to get it back. The Fourth Crusade presented an opportunity for the elderly Doge Enrico Dandolo. Venice had agreed to hire out ships to transport the French crusaders to the Holy Land. However, the French could not afford to pay. So the wily Venetians proposed that, in lieu of payment, the French could help them capture Zadar. The result was the sacking of the city in 1202. In Zadar, this is still seen as an infamous event. When he heard of it, Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusade’s participants, although he later partially relented, restricting the ban to the Venetians only. Yet here, in the Doge’s Palace, the conquest of Zadar is presented as a heroic and glorious event.

Other paintings celebrate the conquest of Constantinople and the coronation of a Venetian puppet, Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, as the new eastern Emperor. The rapaciousness of the crusaders as they smashed, looted and murdered their way through the city in 1204 made this one of the most notorious events in European history. Its legacy is still felt in the bitterness of many Orthodox Christians towards the West. The Venetian army fully participated in the capture of the town, and they shared in its plunder. Among numerous artistic works carted off back to Venice were the four great bronze horses, which dated from antiquity and had stood in the hippodrome for centuries, and which were placed above the entrance to St. Mark’s Basilica (they were replaced by replicas in the 1980s). Crusaders, who had taken an oath on the cross, desecrated the great Basilica of Hagia Sophia, raped nuns, and smashed holy icons and relics in a wanton frenzy of destruction.

The destruction wrought by the Crusaders in Constantinople had longer term consequences than the devastation of the great city. Byzantium was left withered and territorially truncated, an enfeeblement that left it unable to withstand the later Ottoman onslaught. But from the battering of Constantinople it was Venice that emerged as the greatest immediate winner. With the help of the Crusaders, Venice recaptured Zadar; humbled Byzantium; acquired key strategic territories in the eastern Mediterranean; excluded rivals Genoa and Pisa from trade in the reduced Byzantine Empire; and deflected the Crusaders from their initial goal of attacking Egypt, with which Venice was negotiating a trade deal. As depicted in the painting in the Great Council chamber, for Venice it was a triumph. And yet as I looked at the paintings, I was most struck by how such events, regarded in the Eastern Orthodox world as infamous and shameful, were here celebrated as glorious.