Emirate of Bari | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
847–871 | |||||||||
Capital | Bari | ||||||||
Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
Emir | |||||||||
• 847–c.852 | Khalfun | ||||||||
• c.857-871 | Sawdan | ||||||||
History | |||||||||
• Established | 847 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 871 | ||||||||
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The Emirate of Bari was a short-lived Islamic state in Apulia, in what is now Italy, ruled by non-Arabs, probably Berbers and Black Africans. [1] [2] [3] Controlled from the South Italian city of Bari, it was established about 847 when the region was taken from the Byzantine Empire, but fell in 871 to the army of the Carolingian emperor Louis II.
Bari first became the object of Aghlabid raids in late 840 or early 841, when it was briefly occupied. [4] According to Al-Baladhuri, Bari was conquered from the Byzantine Empire by Kalfün around 847, a mawla —perhaps a servant or escaped slave—of the Aghlabid Emir of Africa. [5] Kalfün (Khalfun) was probably of Berber stock, possibly from the Emirate of Sicily originally. The conquest was seen by contemporary Muslims as unimportant, having been carried out by a minor figure without the support of any other Muslim state. However, Kalfün's successor Mufarrag ibn Sallam sent requests to Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil in Baghdad as well as to his provincial governor of Egypt asking for recognition of the conquest with the title of wali , a governor ruling over a province of the Caliphate, which was granted. [5] Mufarrag expanded Muslim influence and enlarged the territory of the emirate.
The third and last emir of Bari was Sawdan, who came to power around 857 after the murder of his predecessor Mufarrag. He invaded the lands of the Lombard Principality of Benevento, forcing Prince Adelchis to pay tribute. In 864 he finally obtained the official investiture requested initially by Mufarrag. In the middle of the 860s, a Frankish monk named Bernard and two companions stopped in Bari on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. [6] They successfully petitioned Sawdan for letters of safe-conduct all the way through Egypt and the Holy Land. According to the Itinerarium Bernardi, Bernard's record of the event, Bari, the civitatem Sarracenorum, had formerly belonged to the "Beneventans". [6]
The Hebrew Chronicle of Ahimaaz records that Sawdan, the last emir of Bari, ruled the city wisely and was on good terms with the eminent Jewish scholar Abu Aaron. [6] Christian monastic chronicles, however, portray the emir as nequissimus ac sceleratissimus: "most impossible and wicked". [6] Certainly Muslims raids on Christians (and Jews) did not cease during Sawdan's reign.[ citation needed ] There is evidence for high civilisation in Bari at this point. [7] [8] Giosuè Musca suggests that the emirate was a boon to the regional economy, and that during this time the slave trade, [9] wine trade, and trade in pottery flourished. [7] [8] Under Sawdan the city of Bari was embellished with a mosque, palaces, and public works.
In 859, Lambert I of Spoleto joined Gerard, count of Marsi, Maielpoto, gastald of Telese, and Wandelbert, gastald of Boiano, to prevent Sawdan from re-entering Bari after a campaign against Capua and the Terra di Lavoro. Despite a bloody battle, the emir successfully entered his capital.
The emirate of Bari lasted long enough to enter into relations with its Christian neighbours. [6] According to the Chronicon Salernitanum , ambassadors (legati) were sent to Salerno where they stayed in the episcopal palace, much to the dismay of the bishop. [6] Bari also served as a refuge for at least one political rival of the Emperor Louis II, a man of Spoleto who fled to it during a revolt. [10]
In 865, Louis II, perhaps pressured by the Church, always uncomfortable with a Muslim state in Italy's midst, issued a capitulary calling upon the fighting men of northern Italy to gather at Lucera in the spring of 866 for an assault on Bari. [10] It is unknown, from contemporary sources, whether this force ever marched on Bari, but in the summer of that year the emperor was touring the Campania with his empress, Engelberga, and receiving strong urging from the Lombard princes— Adelchis of Benevento, Guaifer of Salerno, and Landulf II of Capua —to attack Bari again. [10]
It was not until the spring of 867 that Louis took action against the emirate. He immediately besieged Matera and Oria, recently conquered, and burnt the former. [11] Oria was a prosperous locale before the Muslim conquest; Barbara Kreutz thus conjectures that Matera resisted Louis while Oria welcomed him: the former thus was razed. [12] This may have severed communications between Bari and Taranto, the other pole of Muslim power in southern Italy. [11] Louis established a garrison at Canosa on the frontier between Benevento and Bari, but retired to the former by March 868. [11] It was probably at about this time that Louis entered into negotiations with the new Byzantine emperor, Basil I. A marriage between Louis's daughter and Basil's eldest son, Constantine, was probably discussed in return for Byzantine naval assistance in the taking of Bari. [13] The Chronicon Salernitanum inconsistently attaches the initiative for such talks to Louis and then Basil.
The joint attack was projected for late in the summer of 869 and Louis remained at Benevento planning as late as June. The Byzantine fleet—of four hundred ships if the Annales Bertiniani are to be trusted—arrived under the command of Nicetas with the expectation that Louis would hand over his daughter immediately. [14] This he refused to do, for no known reason, but perhaps because Nicetas had refused to recognise his imperial title, since Louis later refers in a letter to the commander's "insulting behaviour". [15] Perhaps, however, the fleet simply arrived too late in autumn. [15]
In 870 the Bariot Muslims stepped up their raids, going so far as to ravage the Gargano Peninsula including the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo. [16] The Emperor Louis organised a response, fighting his way deep into Apulia and Calabria but bypassing major population centres like Bari or Taranto. A few towns were apparently freed of Muslim control and the various Muslim bands encountered were universally defeated. [16] Probably encouraged by these successes, Louis attacked Bari with a ground force of Franks, Germans and Lombards and aided by a fleet of Sclavini . [16] In February 871 the citadel fell and Sawdan was captured and taken to Benevento in chains. [16] The report found in the De Administrando Imperio of Constantine Porphyrogenitus that the Byzantines played a major role in the city's fall is probably a concoction. [17] In the siege of Arab Bari (868–871) participated and Domagoj with fleet of Ragusa which, according to Constantine VII transported Croats and other Archons of Slavs on their ships to Longobardia. [18]
The following are available as part of Sources of Lombard History at the Institut für Mittelalter Forschung:
See too the letter of Emperor Louis II to Emperor Basil I, written in 871 after the capture of Bari, in English translation.
Year 817 (DCCCXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.
Saracen was a term used both in Greek and Latin writings between the 5th and 15th centuries to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Petraea and Arabia Deserta. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage. During the Early Middle Ages, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia.
Matera is a city and the capital of the Province of Matera in the region of Basilicata, in Southern Italy. With a history of continuous occupation dating back to the Palaeolithic, it is renowned for its rock-cut urban core, whose twin cliffside zones are known collectively as the Sassi.
Louis II, sometimes called the Younger, was the king of Italy and emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 844, co-ruling with his father Lothair I until 855, after which he ruled alone.
The Aghlabids were an Arab dynasty centered in Ifriqiya from 800 to 909 that conquered parts of Sicily, Southern Italy, and possibly Sardinia, nominally as vassals of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Aghlabids were from the Najdi tribe of Banu Tamim and adhered to the Mu'tazilite rationalist doctrine within Hanafi Sunni Islam, which they imposed as the state doctrine of Ifriqiya. They ruled until 909 when they were conquered by the new power of the Fatimids.
Islam is a minority religion in Italy. Muslim presence in Italy dates back to the 9th century, when Sicily came under control of the Aghlabid Dynasty. There was a large Muslim presence in Italy from 827 until the 12th century. The Norman conquest of Sicily led to a gradual decline of Islam, due to the conversions and emigration of Muslims toward Northern Africa. A small Muslim community however survived at least until 1300.
The Catepanateof Italy was a province of the Byzantine Empire from 965 until 1071. At its greatest extent, it comprised mainland Italy south of a line drawn from Monte Gargano to the Gulf of Salerno. North of that line, Amalfi and Naples also maintained allegiance to Constantinople through the catepan. The Italian region of Capitanata derives its name from katepanikion.
Arechis II was a Duke of Benevento, in Southern Italy. He sought to expand the Beneventos' influence into areas of Italy that were still under Byzantine control, but he also had to defend against Charlemagne, who had conquered northern Italy.
Longobardia was a Byzantine term for the territories controlled by the Lombards in the Italian Peninsula. In the ninth and tenth centuries, it was also the name of a Byzantine military-civilian province known as the Theme of Longobardia located in southeastern Italy.
Adelchis was the son of Radelchis I, Prince of Benevento, and successor of his brother Radelgar in 854.
Sergius I was the first duke of Naples of his dynasty, often dubbed the "Sergi," which ruled over Naples for almost three centuries from his accession in 840 until the death of his namesake Sergius VII in 1137.
The Principality of Salerno was a medieval Southern Italian state, formed in 851 out of the Principality of Benevento after a decade-long civil war. It was centred on the port city of Salerno. Although it owed allegiance at its foundation to the Carolingian emperor, it was de facto independent throughout its history and alternated its allegiance between the Carolingians and their successors in the West and the Byzantine emperors in the east.
The history of Islam in Sicily and southern Italy began with the first Arab settlement in Sicily, at Mazara, which was captured in 827. The subsequent rule of Sicily and Malta started in the 10th century. The Emirate of Sicily lasted from 831 until 1061, and controlled the whole island by 902. Though Sicily was the primary Muslim stronghold in Italy, some temporary footholds, the most substantial of which was the port city of Bari, were established on the mainland peninsula, especially in mainland southern Italy, though Muslim raids, mainly those of Muhammad I ibn al-Aghlab, reached as far north as Naples, Rome and the northern region of Piedmont. The Arab raids were part of a larger struggle for power in Italy and Europe, with Christian Byzantine, Frankish, Norman and local Italian forces also competing for control. Arabs were sometimes sought as allies by various Christian factions against other factions.
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 Norman conquest of southern Italy lasted from 999 to 1194, involving many battles and independent conquerors.
The siege of Ragusa by the Aghlabids of Ifriqiya lasted for fifteen months, beginning in 866 until the lifting of the siege at the approach of a Byzantine fleet in 868. The failure of the siege and the re-appearance of the Byzantines in the region of Dalmatia signalled the beginning of new aggressive western policy by the new Byzantine emperor, Basil I. Its immediate effects were the re-establishment of Byzantine authority there in the form of the Theme of Dalmatia, and the beginning of the Christianization of the Slavs of the western Balkans, but within a few years it led to renewed Byzantine involvement and presence in southern Italy as well.
The Rythmus de captivitate Ludovici imperatoris is a short alphabetic acrostic poem in Middle Latin lamenting the capture of Louis II, King of Italy and Emperor of the Romans, on 15 August 871. The poem is preserved in a ninth-century manuscript, Veronensis XC (85).
The Frankish emperor Louis II campaigned against the Emirate of Bari continuously from 866 until 871. Louis was allied with the Lombard principalities of southern Italy from the start, but an attempt at joint action with the Byzantine Empire failed in 869. In the final siege of the city of Bari in 871, Louis was assisted by a Slavic fleet from across the Adriatic.
The siege of Salerno was one of the campaigns of the Aghlabids in southern Italy during their conquest of Sicily. The Lombard city of Salerno had strong defences and, despite the use of stone-throwing artillery, the siege lasted a little over a year from its beginning in late 871 or early 872. Prince Guaifer of Salerno led the defence, but the siege was only lifted by the arrival of an army of Lombards and Franks under the Emperor Louis II.
Peter I was the bishop of Benevento from 887 or 894 until at least 902. His pontificate was marked by rapid political shifts, with Benevento successively under Byzantine (891–895), Spoletan (895–897) and Lombard rule. Peter was imprisoned and exiled a first time in 895. He served as the regent and de facto ruler of the Principality of Benevento between 897 and 900. In 902, he was proclaimed prince by the people but refused the office and went into exile a second time. He died in 914, possibly still in exile. He was buried in Benevento