Year 953 (CMLIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Year 902 (CMII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.
Arethas or Aretas was the leader of the Christian community of Najran in the early 6th century, was executed during the persecution of Christians by the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas in 523. He is known from the Acta S. Arethae which exists in two recensions: the earlier and more authentic, which was found by Michel Le Quien and was subsequently dated as no later than the 7th century; the later, revised by Simeon Metaphrastes, dates from the 10th century. The Ge'ez and Arabic versions of the text were published in 2006 and the Greek version in 2007.
Isola delle Femmine is an Italian town in north-western Sicily, administratively part of the Metropolitan City of Palermo.
Saracena is a town and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy. The town is bordered by Altomonte, Castrovillari, Firmo, Lungro, Morano Calabro, Mormanno, Orsomarso and San Basile and is home to the Church of San Leone, a 12th-century Byzantine church. The town's patron is San Leone di Catania, who is celebrated twice a year, once in the spring, then again in late summer.
Sclafani Bagni is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Palermo in the Italian region Sicily, located about 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Palermo.
Casalvecchio Siculo is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about 170 kilometres (110 mi) east of Palermo and about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Messina.
Ficarra is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about 130 kilometres (81 mi) east of Palermo and about 60 kilometres (37 mi) west of Messina, in the Monti Nebrodi. It is surrounded by woods of hazel and olive trees.
Caltabellotta is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about 60 kilometres (37 mi) south of Palermo and about 45 kilometres (28 mi) northwest of Agrigento.
Leo of Tripoli, known in Arabic as Rashīq al-Wardāmī, and Ghulām Zurāfa, was a Greek renegade and fleet commander for the Abbasid Caliphate in the early tenth century. He is most notable for his sack of Thessalonica, the Byzantine Empire's second city, in 904.
The Muslim conquest of Sicily began in June 827 and lasted until 902, when the last major Byzantine stronghold on the island, Taormina, fell. Isolated fortresses remained in Byzantine hands until 965, but the island was henceforth under Muslim rule until conquered in turn by the Normans in the 11th century.
The term Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture, Norman-Sicilian culture or, less inclusively, Norman-Arab culture, refers to the interaction of the Norman, Latin, Arab and Byzantine Greek cultures following the Norman conquest of Sicily and of Norman Africa from 1061 to around 1250. The civilization resulted from numerous exchanges in the cultural and scientific fields, based on the tolerance showed by the Normans towards the Greek-speaking populations and the Muslim settlers. As a result, Sicily under the Normans became a crossroad for the interaction between the Norman and Latin Catholic, Byzantine-Orthodox and Arab-Islamic cultures.
The Siege of Syracuse in 827–828 marks the first attempt by the Aghlabids to conquer the city of Syracuse in Sicily, then a Byzantine province. The Aghlabid army had only months before landed on Sicily, ostensibly in support of the rebel Byzantine general Euphemius. After defeating local forces and taking the fortress of Mazara, they marched on Syracuse, which was the capital of the island under Roman and Byzantine rule. The siege lasted through the winter of 827–828 and until summer, during which time the besieging forces suffered greatly from lack of food and an outbreak of an epidemic, which claimed the life of their commander, Asad ibn al-Furat. In the face of Byzantine reinforcements, the new Arab leader, Muhammad ibn Abi'l-Jawari, abandoned the siege and withdrew to the southwestern part of the island, which remained in their hands. From there they pursued the slow conquest of Sicily, which led to the fall of Syracuse after another long siege in 877–878, and culminated in the fall of Taormina in 902.
The Siege of Syracuse in 877–878 led to the fall of the city of Syracuse, the Roman capital of Sicily, to the Aghlabids. The siege lasted from August 877 to 21 May 878, when the city, effectively left without assistance by the central Byzantine government, was sacked by the Aghlabid forces.
Marius Canard was a French Orientalist and historian.
The Chronicle of Cambridge or Cambridge Chronicle, also known as the Tarʾīkh Jazīrat Ṣiqilliya, is a short, anonymous medieval chronicle covering the years 827–965. It is the earliest native Sicilian chronicle of the emirate of Sicily, and was written from the perspective of a Sicilian Christian of the 10th or 11th century. It survives in two versions: a Greek version in two manuscripts and an Arabic version in one. For years only the Arabic text kept in Cambridge University Library was known, but in 1890 a Greek redaction was discovered. The Greek texts are found in the Vatican Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It has been translated into English, Italian and French.
The Siege of Melite was the capture of the Byzantine city of Melite by an invading Aghlabid army in 870 AD. The siege was initially led by Halaf al-Hādim, a renowned engineer, but he was killed and replaced by Sawāda Ibn Muḥammad. The city withstood the siege for some weeks or months, but it ultimately fell to the invaders, and its inhabitants were massacred and the city was sacked.
Al-Ḥasan ibn al-ʿAbbās was an Aghlabid military commander who fought in Sicily against the Byzantine Empire.
The Battle of Caltavuturo was fought in 881 or 882 between the Byzantine Empire and the Aghlabid emirate of Ifriqiya, during the Muslim conquest of Sicily. It was a major Byzantine victory, although it could not reverse the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
The Siege of Taormina in 902 ended the conquest of the Byzantine city of Taormina, in northeastern Sicily, by the Aghlabids. The campaign was led by the deposed Aghlabid emir, Ibrahim II, as a form of armed pilgrimage and holy war. Ibrahim's forces defeated the Byzantine garrison in a hard-fought battle in front of the city walls, and laid siege to the city. Left unsupported by the Byzantine government, Taormina capitulated on 1 August. The population was massacred or sold into slavery. The fall of this last major Byzantine stronghold signalled the completion of the Muslim conquest of Sicily, which had been ongoing since the 820s, although some minor Byzantine outposts survived until the 960s.
