The Muslims of medieval Italy - Metcalfe, Alex 1967- (Edinburgh University Press, 2009)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Muslim expansion into the central Mediterranean -- The consolidation of Muslim authority in Sicily -- Fatimid rule in Sicily -- The civil war and Sicilian ṭā'ifa period -- The Norman conquest of Muslim Sicily -- Muslims under early Norman rule : churches, charters and lordships -- The Muslims in the kingdom of Sicily -- The Normans in Africa -- The Muslim massacres of the 1160s -- Eunuchs, familiars, collaborators and conspirators -- Monreale and the Muslims -- The art of leisure -- The science of power -- The Muslim revolts and the colony at Lucera
This significant new work focuses on the formation and fragmentation of an Arab-Muslim state and its society in Sicily and south Italy between 800 and 1300, which led to the formation of an enduring Muslim-Christian frontier during the age of the Crusades. It examines the long- and short-term impact of Muslim authority in regions that were to fall into the hands of European rulers, and explains how and why Muslim and Norman conquests imported radically different dynamics to the central Mediterranean. On the island of Sicily, a majority Muslim population came to be ruled by Christian kings who