A History of Muslim Sicily

Abstract

logical evidence on Indian Ocean port cities such as Aden, demonstrating how their role as entrepôts simultaneously connected them to and separated them from their hinterlands. Fortifications served the purpose of capturing trade and taxes from their competitors in the Indian Ocean, rather than insulating the cities from the sea (p. 120). Yossef Rapoport’s study of a unique set of maps of the Mediterranean produced in the fifth/eleventh century in Fāt ̇ imid Egypt shows the degree to which military conflict between the Fāt ̇ imids and the Byzantine Empire at the time was linked to deeper commercial processes of competition and connection. Following Udovitch, Rapoport argues that “the expansion in international commerce along the [... ] Mediterranean was [... ] driven by thriving production centers and markets in the southern shores” (p. 183). The maps that accompany this chapter contain a wealth of naval intelligence reflecting a forgotten shared maritime culture that by the end of the century had been disrupted by the Crusades (pp. 207–8). In all of these studies, normative texts are juxtaposed with literary and archival material to reveal new particulars, or cases of micro-history, as much as they reveal subjectivities. The cumulative effect is to problematise the assumptions that usually govern our understanding of the Islamic past, in which rupture rather than continuity distinguished the Jāhilı̄ from the Islamic periods, hostility characterised relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims, and fear of the sea led to the eclipse of ports by their hinterlands. Although this volume is a tribute by former students to their teacher, it should serve as a guide to future students on the merits of solid historical scholarship.