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The Medieval History of Palermo in a New Light Annliese Nef the City Of

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The Medieval History of Palermo in a New Light Annliese Nef the City Of THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF PALERMO IN A NEW LIGHT Annliese Nef The city of Palermo, more than most perhaps, gives rise to dreams and is invested with images and descriptions both negative and positive, where the present and the past often collide.1 Located in the centre of the Medi- terranean, it sits within a sheltered harbour on the north-west coast of Sicily, an island whose contours delimit two crucial spaces in the east-west navigation of that sea (the Sicilian channel and the straits of Messina). The original urban core, oriented NE-SW,2 was established on a promon- tory delimited by two water courses: to the north, the Papireto, and to the south, the Kemonia, both of which flowed into the sea. Surrounded by the fertile plain with its many gardens known as the “Conca d’Oro,” Palermo is encircled by mountains, among them the famous Monte Pellegrino, which is 600 metres at its summit. From the Islamic period onwards, the urban fabric exceeded the limits of the first fortified urban core, but this latter continued to be the heart of the city throughout the whole of the medi- eval period. From the Capital of an Imperial Province (6th–11th Century) to the Capital of a Kingdom (11th–15th Century) At first a city and bishopric of middling importance within the rich Byz- antine province of Sicily (6th–9th century),3 Palermo became in the 9th century the Emiral capital of Islamic Sicily. Being drawn from the time of its conquest in 831 into the orbit of the Aghlabids (800–909), who were 1 Consider, for example, the issue of La pensée de midi, 8 (2002), entitled “Retrouver Palerme”. 2 The principal axes of the historical core, in particular via Marmorea, or Cassaro, the present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele, retained the same orientation throughout the Mid- dle Ages. Nevertheless, in an attempt to simplify things, geographers, like the notarised medieval deeds, describe them as east-west axes. In order to complicate things still further, contemporary cartography represents the Cassaro (south-west/north-east) as if it were ori- ented north-south and with the sea lying to the south rather than to the north-east. This conventional orientation has been adopted in the present volume. 3 See on this period of the island’s history the numerous studies by Vivien Prigent, who devoted his doctoral thesis to it. 2 annliese nef themselves representatives of the Abbassids in Ifrīqiya, and then—between 909 and the first third of the 11th century—into that of the Fatimids,4 it was entrusted by the latter to the powerful family of the Kalbids, who governed the island in their name. The island was subsequently administered by a council, after the break-up of the Emirate (c. 1040). Finally, in 1072, Sicily was conquered by troops from the mainland led by the Hauteville. A new chapter then began for Palermo, which saw it become the capi- tal of the kingdom of Sicily, in 1130, under the new dynasty, which was Norman in origin, a status it retained until the end of the Middle Ages, even if the island would over time be integrated by turns into a number of different political dispensations, though no longer enjoying within them the primacy that it had known in the 12th century in the south of Italy.5 Reattached to the empire of the Hohenstaufen from 1194,6 the island became embroiled in the confrontation between Guelphs and Ghibel- lines, which crystallized as a long-lasting dispute between the Papacy and the Empire. After a decade of war, Sicily was subsumed in 1265–1266 into the Angevin kingdom. In actual fact, the brother of the king of France, Charles of Anjou, count of Anjou, of Maine, and of Provence, the Pope’s ally, having been vested with power over Sicily by the latter, seized it and became its king, though not without Ghibelline resistance. In 1282, the famous Sicilian Vespers,7 a revolt unleashed by the Palermi- tans against the French, brought the Angevin interlude8 to a close, when the kingdom re-entered the Aragonese orbit,9 under the rule of Peter III of Aragon. This date also marks Sicily’s definitive exit from the southern 4 This Shiʿite dynasty drove the Aghlabids from power and established in Ifrīqiya a new caliphate, rivalling the Abbassids, in 909. From 969, the caliphal capital was moved to the new Egyptian foundation of Cairo. 5 On the period of the Hauteville and the Hohenstaufen see Salvatore Tramontana, La monarchia normanna e sveva, in Giuseppe Galasso, ed., Storia d’Italia (Turin, 1983), III, pp. 435–810, subsequently published separately (Turin, 1986); Annliese Nef, Conquérir et gouverner la Sicile islamique aux XIe et XIIe siècles (Rome, 2011) and, for Frederick II, David Abulafia, Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor (London 1988). 6 William II (1166–1189) died without a heir and the emperor Henry VI, who married Constance, the daughter of Roger II, then prevailed. 7 Salvatore Tramontana, Gli anni del vespro. L’immaginario, la cronaca, la storia (Bari, 1989). 8 Charles of Anjou and his descendants then retained the kingdom of Naples. 9 In 1262, Constance, granddaughter of Frederick II had married Peter III of Aragon. This explains why the pro-Swabians and anti-Angevins in exile would before long gravitate to Barcelona..
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