Alexander James Metcalfe
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Arabic-speakers in Norman Sicily Alexander James Metcalfe Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Date of submission: December 1999 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. 1 Acknowledgements There are a number of people to whom I would like to express my most grateful thanks. To my supervisors Drs Jeremy Johns and Dionisius Agius who have selflessly shared their expert knowledge with me over the past three years. To the British Academy Humanities Research Board for their generous funding from October 1996 to October 1999 and for their financial help in making a study visit to Sicily in April 1998. To Drs Adalgisa De Simone, Vera von Falkenhausen and Graham Loud for their ideas, advice and encouragement and to Dr Ferdinando Maurici and his wife Lalla for their unfailing hospitality and help in Palermo and Villafrati. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Ian Netton from the University of Leeds and Dr Michael Brett from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London who acted as my examiners, my parents for their loyal support and Laura Scanu for her good-natured patience. ll Abstract The linguistic history of medieval Sicily is both intriguing and complex. From the classical Roman and Byzantine periods until the Arab invasions of 827, the majority of the island's population spoke either dialects of Greek or Latin or both. On the arrival of the Normans around 1060, Arabic was the dominant language but by 1250 prestigious Romance vernaculars could be heard almost everywhere. Of particular importance is the formative period of Norman rule (1061-1194), when the key transitions from an Arab-Muslim to a Latin- Christian island were made. During that time Romance dialects were spoken by many among the ruling elite but most of the indigenous population continued to communicate in Arabic except in the north-eastern corner of the island where Greek was still used. The conventional wisdom is that, under Norman rule, Sicily became a social and linguistic 'melting pot'. My thesis challenges this idea by showing how the extant linguistic data does not always present an accurate picture of the wider language situation and by arguing that Norman Sicilian society was often highly fragmented and characterised by a good deal of local variation. To illustrate this, the thesis traces the distribution and shifting margins of the Arabic-speaking communities and the effects that social change and religious conversion had on these groups. These findings are integrated with sociolinguistic considerations that surround language, identity and bilingualism. From a purely linguistic perspective, the thesis has a significant technical component and examines the bilingual deeds (Arabic/Greek or Arabic/Latin) that were issued by the royal administration. Particular attention is given to the type, status and consistency of this unique data and the extent to which it accurately reflects elements of vernacular speech. As such, the research makes a number of significant contributions to our understanding of the sources for medieval Arabic and the fate of Arabic- speakers in this region. It also adds to our knowledge of how a minority group of northern Europeans came to impose their control over a population of Arabic-speaking Muslims, Arabicised Christians, Greek-speakers, Berbers and Jews on the eve of the expansion that the Crusades would bring to the southern Mediterranean. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT ii TRANSLITERATION SCHEMES vi MAP OF NORMAN SICILY vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Arabic as a language of the ruling elite Early Arabic-speaking administrators and the changing fate of Arabic as an 6 administrative language The establishment of the kingdom and the reforms of the 1140s 10 The Norman kings and their languages 13 Patronage and translations 16 Arabic-speakers among the ruling elite: The Palace Saracens 20 The Mustaxlafin the royal palace 23 Arabic-speaking ancillary staff in the royal palaces 26 Non-Arabic speakers 28 CHAPTER TWO: De saracenico in latinum transferri: the boundary register tradition and the estates of Monreale Introduction and aims 30 Defining the royal demesne: Arabic-speakers and Arabic boundary registers 31 The distinctive language of boundary registers 35 Some initial observations 37 The magna divisa of Corleone: language, genealogy and dating 46 The development of administrative genres and the coining and transmission of loan 52 words The mechanics of the transliteration process 55 Arabic loan words and vernacular speech 62 Trilingual vocabulary: variety and status 66 Summary and conclusions 69 CHAPTER THREE: The Arabic of the villein registers: composition, style and status The art of the dlwani translator 72 The extent of collaboration between scribes 72 The copying process 73 Salvatore Cusa's Diplomi Greci ed Arabi 79 The villein registers and their contents: the Forestal confirmation of 1145 83 iv Historical notes on the Forestal register 87 Färimid influences and language of formulae 88 Christian influences in Sicilian swath Arabic 90 Middle Arabic of Sicily 91 CHAPTER FOUR: Arabic-speaking Greeks Greek Inflections 95 Devoicing from Arabic to Greek and Latin 99 The translation or transliteration of Arabic names in Greek 101 Tendencies and variations 111 The Arabic-Greek villein registers: different scribes, different results 112 Variations in treatment of the Arabic definite article in Greek 114 Transcriptions, transliterations and the assimilation of the Arabic definite article 118 The agglutination of the Arabic definite article 122 Transcription, transliteration and evidence for ltnäla in Arabic 124 The definite article, linguistic interference and translation 125 Deriving correspondences between Arabic and Greek 130 CHAPTER FNE: At the margins of the Arabic-apeaking communities The Siculi trilingues 134 The Musacmidrln 136 Twelfth-century terms of reference 140 North African contingents 141 The Berber Question 143 Arabic and the Jewish communities 146 Defining contrasts: ethnicity and geography 147 Messina and Agrigento: Greek Christians and Arab-Muslims 148 Defining the margins of the Arabic-speaking communities 149 Demographic mobility: the villeins around Cefalü 150 Naming and ethnicity 152 Ethnic minorities among villeins: Catania and Aci 1095 154 Arabic and Greek names from Nicötera 1093 156 Patti: Saracens, 'Greeks' and 'men of the Latin tongue' 157 The extent of local variation: an early register from western Sicily 164 CHAPTER SIX: Language, conversion and ethnicity Sicily as a social and linguistic 'melting pot'? 166 Arabic and Islam 167 The condition of Muslim villeins 168 Early Conversions 170 The 'Palace Saracens' and religious ambiguity 173 The Case of Ibn Zurza 177 Onomastic data as evidence for conversion 180 Abandoning Arabic names: the villeins of Collesano 181 V Assessing mixed names 184 Non-Arabic names from the Monreale villeins in 1178 187 The Christians of Corleone 190 Distinguishing between Arab-Muslims and Arab-Christians 192 Arab-Christians: the social and linguistic link between Arab-Muslims and Latin 194 Christianity? The Arab-Christian women of Palermo 195 CONCLUSION 198 APPENDIX ONE: Latin index of Monreale boundaries 206 APPENDIX TWO: Examples of Norman Sicilian manuscripts Part of an early villein register from 1095 223 Two manuscript errors from the Monreale 1183 register 225 The royal confirmation of villeins issued to Walter Forestal' in 1143 227 BIBLIOGRAPHY 230 vi Transliteration Schemes Arabic: ý alif ä 3 zäy z qäf q b w sin s käf k t l' 9M- ! am 1 t oll säd s ý mim m PM g V;l did d nün n hä' h No h .b ta' khä' x zä' z s wäw w/ü dä1 d t `ayn ` s ya' yli dg d gayn g hamza Ra r ý' f Greek: a alpha a t iota i P rho r S beta v K kappa k 6 sigma y gamma g/y X lambda 1 T tau t S delta d It mu m 1) upsilon Y 0 f e epsilon e v nu n phi ý Chi zeta z xu x x ch 71 eta i 0 omicron 0 w psi PS GJ 0 theta th 7C pi p omega 0 ý, r ,ý ý ý 1 Introduction Introduction One of the key issues of Norman Sicily (c. 1061-c. 1194) is how to account for the broad social and linguistic shift from an Arabic-speaking Muslim island to an essentially Latin-speaking Christian one within 200 years of the Normans' arrival. Indeed, there can be few major works on the history of Norman Sicily that do not address the language issue at some point. That said, not one tackles this fundamental question directly. The aim of this research is to fill that void, at least in part, with a debate about 'Arabic-speakers in Norman Sicily, ' a title that not only allows an examination of the Muslim communities, but also embraces those of Arabic-speaking Christians. A natural extension to this inquiry is to study the possible varieties of Arabic spoken by such groups. Thus, the thesis comprises of two overlapping strands; one socio-historical, the other linguistic. A range of source material is available for this study although not all provides the same quality or type of evidence. Unlike medieval Spain, no Sicilian Arabic poetry composed in the vernacular has survived and the few remaining literary works are all written in higher registers and/or strictly stylised forms. Some significant works survive as do several fragmentary pieces, but none yield anything of dialect forms. Furthermore, many 'Sicilian' authors actually hailed ' from Iffiqiya, Spain or Egypt. Other written media include a number of inscriptions in Arabic, but these are few, short and almost all were based on 2 models of a high Arabic register.