Thiqat al-Dawla, born Yusuf b. Abd Allah al-Kalbi, was the Emir of the Emirate of Sicily from 990 to 998 AD. As Emir, Thiqat was known for his generosity as a patron of the arts and his military victories over the Byzantines.
Thiqat ruled over the Emirate at its peak, but his rule also marked the beginning of a period of decline that would eventually lead to its fall. [1]
As a generous patron of the arts, Thiqat was often praised in poetry. Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi described him as "a great king and a generous man. Poets and scholars would come to him from everywhere, so he elevated their ranks and was very charitable towards them" in his work al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib. Other poets such as Ibn al-Khayyat praised his military genius, defense of the Islamic faith, generosity, and wisdom. Muḥammad b. Abdūn al-Sūsī compared Thiqat to a full moon. [2]
The 820s decade ran from January 1, 820, to December 31, 829.
Emir, also transliterated as amir, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or ceremonial authority. The title has a history of use in West Asia, East Africa, West Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia. In the modern era, when used as a formal monarchical title, it is roughly synonymous with "prince", applicable both to a son of a hereditary monarch, and to a reigning monarch of a sovereign principality, namely an emirate. The feminine form is emira, with the same meaning as "princess".
The Rashidi dynasty, also called Al Rashid or the House of Rashid, was a historic Arabian House or dynasty that existed in the Arabian Peninsula between 1836 and 1921. Its members were rulers of the Emirate of Ha'il and the most formidable enemies of the House of Saud, rulers of the Emirate of Nejd. They were centered in Ha'il, a city in northern Najd that derived its wealth from being on the route of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and was also a commercial center. The rulers of Ha'il were the sons of Abdullah bin Rashid, founder of the dynasty.
Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mutanabbī al-Kindī, commonly known as Al-Mutanabbi, was a famous Abbasid-era Arabian poet at the court of the Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla in Aleppo, and for whom he composed 300 folios of poetry. His poetic style earned him great popularity in his time and many of his poems are not only still widely read in today's Arab world but are considered to be proverbial.
The Kalbids were a Muslim Arab dynasty which ruled the Emirate of Sicily from 948 to 1053. They were formally appointed by the Fatimids, but gained, progressively, de facto autonomous rule.
Abu al-Misk Kafur (905–968), also called al-Laithi, al-Suri, al-Labi was a dominant personality of Ikhshidid Egypt and Syria. Originally a black slave, probably from Nubia, he was made vizier of Egypt, becoming its de facto ruler from 946 after the death of his master, Muhammad bin Tughj. Thereafter, he ruled the Ikshidid domains—Egypt and southern Syria —until his death in 968.
The Marwanids or Dustakids, Marwanid Emirate were a Kurdish Sunni Muslim dynasty in the Diyar Bakr region of Upper Mesopotamia and Armenia, centered on the city of Amid (Diyarbakır).
The island of Sicily was under Islamic rule from the late ninth to late eleventh centuries. It became a prosperous and influential commercial power in the Mediterranean, with its capital of Palermo serving as a major cultural and political center of the Muslim world.
Cizre is a city in the Cizre District of Şırnak Province in Turkey. It is located on the river Tigris by the Syria–Turkey border and close to the Iraq–Turkey border. Cizre is in the historical region of Upper Mesopotamia and the cultural region of Turkish Kurdistan. The city had a population of 130,916 in 2021.
The history of Islam in Sicily and southern Italy began with Arab colonization 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 Arab 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 indigenous Italian forces also competing for control. Arabs were sometimes allied with 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.
Abu Ali Salih ibn Mirdas, also known by his laqabAsad al-Dawla, was the founder of the Mirdasid dynasty and emir of Aleppo from 1025 until his death in May 1029. At its peak, his emirate (principality) encompassed much of the western Jazira, northern Syria and several central Syrian towns. With occasional interruption, Salih's descendants ruled Aleppo for the next five decades.
Ibn Ḥamdīs al-ʾAzdī al-Ṣīqillī was a Sicilian Arab poet.
The unification of Saudi Arabia was a military and political campaign in which the various tribes, sheikhdoms, city-states, emirates, and kingdoms of most of the central Arabian Peninsula were conquered by the House of Saud, or Al Saud. Unification started in 1902 and continued until 1932, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed under the leadership of Abdulaziz, known in the West as Ibn Saud, creating what is sometimes referred to as the Third Saudi State, to differentiate it from the Emirate of Diriyah, the First Saudi State and the Emirate of Nejd, the Second Saudi State, also House of Saud states.
The term Norman–Arab–Byzantine culture, Norman–Sicilian culture or, less inclusively, Norman–Arab culture, refers to the interaction of the Norman, Byzantine Greek, Latin, and Arab cultures following the Norman conquest of the former Emirate of Sicily and North 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 Latin- and Greek-speaking Christian populations and the former Arab 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 Emirate of Granada, also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, was an Islamic polity in the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. It was the last independent Muslim state in Western Europe.
The Kingdom of Africa was an extension of the frontier zone of the Kingdom of Sicily in the former Roman province of Africa, corresponding to Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya today. The main primary sources for the kingdom are Arabic (Muslim); the Latin (Christian) sources are scanter.
The Emirate of Jabal Shammar, also known as the Emirate of Haʾil or the Rashidi Emirate, was a state in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, including Najd, existing from the mid-nineteenth century to 1921. Shammar had been a confederation in the Arabian Peninsula. Jabal Shammar in English is translated as the "Mountain of the Shammar". Jabal Shammar's capital was Ha'il. It was led by the monarchy of the Rashidi dynasty. It included parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan.
The Emirate of Harar was a Muslim kingdom founded in 1647 when the Harari people refused to accept Imām ʿUmardīn Ādan as their ruler and broke away from the Imamate of Aussa to form their own state under `Ali ibn Da`ud.
The Banu Munqidh, also referred to as the Munqidhites, were an Arab family that ruled an emirate in the Orontes Valley in northern Syria from the mid-11th century until the family's demise in an earthquake in 1157. The emirate was initially based in Kafartab before the Banu Munqidh took over the fortress of Shayzar in 1081 and made it their headquarters for the remainder of their rule. The capture of Shayzar was the culmination of a long, drawn-out process beginning with the Banu Munqidh's nominal assignment to the land by the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo in 1025, and accelerating with the weakened grip of Byzantine rule in northern Syria in the 1070s.