Siege of Taormina | |||||||
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Part of the Norman conquest of southern Italy | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Roger I of Sicily | Emirate of Sicily | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Otto the Aleramid Jordan of Hauteville Arisgot du Pucheuil Elias Cartomensis | |||||||
The siege of Taormina in 1078 was one of the final acts in the Norman conquest of Sicily. [1]
The Norman Count of Sicily, Roger I, after storming Castronovo, turned to the conquest of the Val Demone region. The Normans laid siege to Taormina by constructing 22 wooden forts around it in circumvallation. The Norman army divided into four contingents, commanded by Otto the Aleramid, probably the uncle of Adelaide del Vasto, the illegitimate son of the Count, Jordan, the Norman Arisgot du Pucheuil, and Elias Cartomensis, a Muslim from Cártama who converted to Christianity. Nevertheless, the Arabs resisted for some time, before capitulating.
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. The Strait of Messina separates it from the region of Calabria in Southern Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. The region has 5 million inhabitants. Its capital city is Palermo.
Butera is an Italian town and a comune in the province of Caltanissetta, in the southern part of the island of Sicily. It is bounded by the comuni of Gela, Licata, Mazzarino, Ravanusa and Riesi. It has a population of 4,653 (2017) and is 49 km (30 mi) from Caltanissetta, the province's capital.
Michele Amari was a Sicilian patriot, historian and orientalist.
The Kalbids were a Muslim Arab dynasty in the Emirate of Sicily, which ruled from 948 to 1053. They were formally appointed by the Fatimids, but gained, progressively, de facto autonomous rule.
The Emirate of Sicily was an Islamic kingdom that ruled the island of Sicily from 831 to 1091. Its capital was Palermo, which during this period became a major cultural and political center of the Muslim world.
Siculo-Arabic also known as Sicilian Arabic is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily from the 9th century, persisting under the subsequent Norman rule until the 13th century. It was derived from early Maghrebi Arabic following the Abbasid conquest of Sicily in the 9th century and gradually marginalized following the Norman conquest in the 11th century.
Giovanni Luca Barberi (1452–1520) was an Italian historian, lawyer and notary. He was born and lived in Sicily all of his life.
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 1139, involving many battles and independent conquerors.
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 shown 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.
Pozzo Ardizzi surname comes from the city of Vigevano province of Pavia, Italy, which was formed around the middle of the fifteenth century from a branch of the family that is separated from the noble surname Ardizzi.
The Sicilian Parliament was the legislature of the Kingdom of Sicily.
The colonies of the Republic of Genoa were a series of economic and trade posts in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Some of them had been established directly under the patronage of the republican authorities to support the economy of the local merchants, while others originated as feudal possessions of Genoese nobles, or had been founded by powerful private institutions, such as the Bank of Saint George.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
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 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.
Asmundo is an old Sicilian noble family that has played a notable role in the island's political, cultural, and economic history.
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.
The Annales Siculi is an anonymous set of Latin annals covering the island of Sicily between 1027 and 1265. Although it covers the entire period of Norman rule in Sicily and almost the entire period of Staufer rule, the Annales is not concerned with the kingdom of Sicily as a whole but only the island. It is least accurate for the earliest period, down to 1052, and is most substantial for the reigns of the Staufer kings Frederick II (1197–1250) and Manfred (1258–1266). It is conjectured to be the work of a monk, probably from the vicinity of Messina. The quality of the text's Latin is poor. It was probably composed sometime after the Angevin conquest of the kingdom in 1266.
Taormina affamata si arrese nell'agosto del 1078, dopo cinque mesi di assedio.