British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2004: Abstracts

21 April 2004

Dr Alex Metcalfe

The Transformation of Islamic Sicily in the C12th century

The social, religious and linguistic history of medieval Sicily is both intriguing and complex. For several centuries prior to the Muslim invasion of 827, the Christian islanders had spoken dialects of either Latin or Greek. On the arrival of the Normans around 1060, Arabic was the dominant language and Islam the dominant religion, but by 1250 Sicily was again almost exclusively Christian with the Romance dialects of more recent settlers in evidence everywhere. Of particular importance was the formative period of Norman control (1061-1194) when most of the key transitions from an Arabic-speaking Muslim island to a Latin-speaking Christian one were made. This paper explains the dynamic forces behind these fundamental shifts.

Alex Metcalfe is currently in the final year of his British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Leeds University in the Dept of Arabic & Middle Eastern Studies. The aim of his research project is to produce a critical edition of major series of royal administrative documents in Arabic, Latin and Greek from C12th Norman Sicily. He holds degrees in Literae Humaniores (from Oxford) and Arabic (from Leeds) and in 2003 published his first monograph ‘Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily’ with Routledge-Curzon Press.