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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
The study of Muslim rule and its vestiges in medieval Sicily has a long and distinguished pedigree. In the nineteenth century the impetus was both scholarly and political, to which the monumental works of Amari and De Mas Latrie bear eloquent witness. In more recent times the motive has been simple and straightforward curiosity about a remarkable instance of cultural symbiosis. The parameters are now either linguistic or historical or both, and the gain is substantial. With the reprint exactly a century after its original publication in Palermo of Salvatore Cusa's I Diplomi greci ed Arabi di Sicilia one might be permitted to suppose that a reassessment of the earlier scholarship is underway. But the commemoration is itself curiously unhelpful: we are offered a typographically reduced replica of the original innocent of comment save for two pages of very general observations by Albrecht Noth on the significance of Cusa's compilation for students of Islamic history. Neither reference to subsequent work nor indication of a present project is included, a circumstance that only with generosity could be regarded as tantalizing.
1 Cusa, S., I Diplomi Greci ed Arabi di Sicilia, pubblicati net testo originate, tradotti ed illustrati, I, 1 and 2, Palermo, 1868, 1882 = Nachdruck der Ausgaben Palermo mit einem Vorwort von Albrecht Noth, Böhlau Verlag, Köln u. Wien, 1982Google Scholar
2 Kehr, K., Die Urkunden der normannisch-sizilischen Kōnige, Innsbruck, 1902Google Scholar; B., and Lagumina, G., Codice diplomatico dei Ouidei di Sicilia, Palermo, 1884–1909Google Scholar; Chalandon, F., Histoire dela domination normande en Italie el en Sicile, Paris, 1907Google Scholar; cf. Menager, L., Amiratus 'Aμηρâç, L'Émirat et les origines de l'amirauté (XIe-XIIIe siècles), Paris 1960Google Scholar, using inter alios Garufi, C., I documenti inediti dell'epoca normanna in Sicilia, Palermo, 1899Google Scholar; Caspar, E., Roger II (1105–1154) und die Gründung der normannisch-sicilischen Monarchie, Innsbruck, 1904Google Scholar; Collura, P., Appendice al Regesto dei diplomi di Re Ruggero compilalo da Erich Caspar, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Ruggeriani, II, Palermo, 1955, 545–625Google Scholar
3 Bresslau, H., Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien, (3. Auflage) Berlin, 1958CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Goitein, S. D., A Mediterranean society, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967–1978Google Scholar; Braudel, F., La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a Vépoque de Philippe II, (2nd ed.), Paris, 1966Google Scholar; cf. Bono, S., ‘Le relazioni commerciali fra i paesi del Maghreb e l'ltalia nel Medioevo’, Quaderni dellāIstituto Italiano di cultura di Tripoli, Tripoli, 1967Google Scholar, drawing upon Latrie, M. L. de Mas, Trait's de paix et de commerce el documents divers concernant Us relations des Chretiens avec les Arabes de lľ Afrique septentrionale au Moyen Age, Paris, 1866 (repr. New York s.d.)Google Scholar; Heyd, W., Hislorie du commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipzig, 1885–1986 (repr. Amsterdam, 1959)Google Scholar; Amari, M., Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, (2. edizione), pubblicata con note a cura di Nallino, C. A., Catania, 1933–1937 (ad Mas Latrie, cf. SMS, II, p. 424 no. 1, and ad Cusa, SMS, i, p. xxxii, II, p. 898 n. 1)Google Scholar
5 See BSOAS, XXVIII, 3, 1965, 483–7Google Scholar; and BSOAS, XXXIV, 1, 1971, 30–2Google Scholar
6 For the present (and provisional) location of some of these documents, see BSOAS, XXX, 2, 1967, p. 305 n. 1Google Scholar: Cusa no. 201, being a letter dated 1628 from the Druze amir Fakhr al-din II, is of course, like no. 202 (dated 1629 and in Turkish, from the same source), irrelevant to a study of Sicilian chancery practice
7 BSOAS, XXX, 2, 1967, p. 305 n. 1Google Scholar; i.e., nos. 23 (La Mantia, op. cit.), 45, 70, 119 (Menager, op. cit.), 132, 143 (Noel des Vergers, art. cit.), 190 (Collura, op. cit.), to which may be added no. 90 (Sauvaire, JA, 1882, 122–6, adduced by Amari, SMS, in, p. 242 n. 3); cf. also n. 2 supra
8 A. Noth, Die arabischen Dokumente Rogers II., apud C. Brühl, Urkunden and Kanzlei Kōnig Rogers II. von Sizilien, Bohlau Verlag (!), Köln u. Wien, 1978, 217–61. In addition to the 12 ‘royal’ documents in Cusa, four similar instruments from the Archivo Ducal de Medinaceli in Seville are briefly adduced (pp. 230—31). Some five documents of private origin from the same period (Cusa nos. 31, 43, 54, 61 and 90) are not treated here (cf. p. 236, bottom), but there are throughout the study remarks indicating further projects (e.g., p. 233 n. 92, pp. 235, 240, 259, 261). Absence of reference to all this in his preface to the reprint is something of a puzzle. For knowledge of Noth's article as well as other bibliographica I am indebted to Dr. Jeremy Johns, whose Oxford thesis (1983), entitled ‘The Muslims of Norman Sicily c. 1060–c. 1194’ is in fact the latest and most significant contribution to this field. Written under the supervision of my colleague Dr. Michael Brett, this study deals in particular with the territory of Santa Maria di Monreale as extrapolated from the chancery charters (jarā'id). In an appendix Johns has analysed, amongst other materials, 23 of the documents first printed by Cusa, Vorarbeiten to his planned and much needed edition of these
9 i.e. Stern, S. M., Fatimid decrees, London, 1964Google Scholar (see BSOAS, xxvnr, 3, 1965, 633–6); Qalqashandī, , Kitāb ṣubḥ al-a'shā, Cairo, 1913–1919Google Scholar; further material may be found, for the West, in Lucena, L. Seco de, Documentos Arabigo-Granadinos, Madrid, 1961Google Scholar, and Hoenerbach, W., Spanisch-Islamische Vrkunden aus der Zeit der Nasriden und Moriscos, Bonn, 1965Google Scholar (see BSOAS, xxx, 1, 1967, 185–7), and in general, apud Stern, S. M. (ed.), Documents from Islamic chanceries, Oxford, 1965Google Scholar
10 e.g. Mayer, L. A., The builđings of Qaytbay as described in his endowment deed, London, 1938Google Scholar; Vesely, R., An Arab diplomatic document from Egypt: The endowment deed of Mahmud Pasha dated 974/1567, Prague, 1971Google Scholar
11 e.g. apud Documents from Islamic chanceries, 39–79; BSOAS, XXVIII, 3, 1965, 483–523Google Scholar; BSOAS, XXXIV, 1, 1971, 20–35, all of the foregoing of course rather later than the Sicilian material. On the other hand, Muslim diplomatic exhibits constant and perennial featuresGoogle Scholar
12 Neither my memory (after 18 years!) nor my photographs of the Sicilian documents permit an assertion as to their Maghribī script, nor, for that matter, do the author's remarks, save possibly his mention (p. 238) of the dāl without ligature. In view of the distinct Maghribī character of Sicilian Arabic (see below), the absence of paleographic evidence provokes at least a question about the personnel of the Norman chancery. The document partially illustrated in Cusa pl. II (no. 79=Noth E.) could have been produced anywhere in the Levant
13 A specimen is described in BSOAS, XXV, 3, 1962. 463–8Google Scholar; cf. Björkman, W., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Staatskanzlei im islamischen Ägypten, Hamburg, 1928, 116–7Google Scholar, and EI, 2nd ed., s.v. Diplomatic
14 See Bresslau, op. cit., II, 395–6, 452–4, and all of the chapter 393–478; neigher Byzantine chancery documents nor the Greek-Arabic papyri from Egypt exhibit this phenomenon, cf. Dölger, F., Byzantinische Diplomatik, Ettal, 1956Google Scholar, Abbott, N., The Ḳurrah papyri from Aphrodito, Chicago, 1938Google Scholar; Grohmann, A., Einführung und Chrestomathie zur arabischen Papyruskunde, Prague, 1954, esp. 219–32Google Scholar. Worthy of note in this context is also the initial corroboratio (ṣaḥḥa…) apud Cusa nos. 54, 102, 129, which may signal renewal or translation or both
15 cf. Dozy, Supplément I, 433 s.v. d.r.s., with reference to Schiaparelli (ed.), Vocabulista in Arabico 29, 308, 593; the calque is ancient: e.g. bayt al-midrās, apud Ibn Isḥā, Sīra (ed. Cairo, 1955, I, 552=Sectarian Milieu, 18)
16 In addition to Ernst, Sultansurkunden, cited p. 247 n. 154, see also BSOAS, XXVI, 3, 1963, 506–7Google Scholar and refs. to CIA
17 See Blau, J., JAOS, 88, 3, 1968, 522–3Google Scholar, ad PIetro, R. Di and Selim, G., ‘The language situation in Arab Sicily’, Linguistic Studies in Memory of R. S. Harrell, Washington, 1967, 19–35Google Scholar
18 cf. Bresslau, op. cit., II, 325–92 (Latin, Greek Italian, French, German); Dülger, op. cit., 240–1 n. 104 (Greek and Latin), 295–8
19 e.g. Ménage, V. L., ‘Seven Ottoman documents from the reign of Mehemmed II’, apud Documents from Islamic Chanceries, 81–118, (Italian and Greek)Google Scholar; Wittek, P., ‘The Turkish documents in Hakluyt's ‘Voyages’’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XIX, 57, 136–7Google Scholar = Skilliter, S., William Harborne and the trade with Turkey (1578–1582), Oxford, 1977, 86–103Google Scholar (see BSOAS, XLII, I, 1979, 152–3); B. Lewis, ‘Some Danish-Tatar exchanges in the seventeenth century’, apud Zeki Veledi Togan's Armagan. Istanbul 1950–55, 137–44 (and two plates), (Ottoman Turkish and Polish!); Castries, H. De, Les sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc, Paris, 1905–, Pays-Bas I, docs. 193 and 209; 24 Dec 1610 (Dutch and French). Qalqashand‛, Ṣubḥ VII, 294 (mughlī = Chagatay?)Google Scholar
20 e.g. the treaty of 1507 between Mamlūk Egypt and the French/Catalan merchants, printed in Charriere, M., Négotiations de la France dans le Levant, Paris, 1848, I, 121–9Google Scholar. Earlier, Greek had been a Levantine chancery language: Zachariadou, E., ‘Sept traités inédits entre Venise et les émirats d'Aydin et de Menteşe (1331–1407)’, in Studi Preottomani e Ottomani, Naples, 1976, 229–40Google Scholar
21 e.g. the Venetian paradigm for Mamlūk-Florentine commercial treaties, BSOAS, XXVIII, 3, 1965, esp. 483–7Google Scholar; and for the Mamlūk-Ragusan treaty of 1514, apud Elezovič, G., Turski Spomenici, Beograd, 1952, I, 2, 175–82Google Scholar; for the commercial treaty between Pisa and the B. Khurasān (Tunis) of 1157, an Egyptian format is fairly clear, see Idris, H., La Berberie Orientale sous les Zirides (Xe–XIIe siecles), Paris, 1962, II, 681–4Google Scholar; the Moroccan-Dutch treaty of 1610 (supra n. 19) became the model for all subsequent relations of the Moroccan court with European powers; an example of rhetorical formulae concealing juridical innovation is treated in BSOAS, XXXIV, 1, 1971 (the Mamlūk-Florentine safe-conduct of 1507), esp. p.30, n. 41, p. 32, n. 54Google Scholar. In early Muslim Egypt administrative terminology was largely the product of calque, see Grohmann, op. cit., p. 107, n. 1
22 For Rome: Bresslau, op. cit, II, 225–97; for Byzantium, Dölger, op. cit., 338–45; for the Islamic world: Björkman, op. cit., 87 ff
23 e.g. W.Hoenerbach, –Some notes on the legal language of Christian and Islamic deeds’, JAOS, 81, 1961, 34–8; idem, Spanisch-Islamische Urkunden, esp. xxxii–xxxxiv on the Notariat (cf. R. Vesely in Archiv Orientalni). 38, 1970, 499–502; an interesting specimen is Hoenerbach no. 38 (pp. 318–25 and pls. LXVII–LXX): an aljamia text with notarial attestation in Arabic (here siglum =signature)
24 BSOAS, XXV, 3, 1962, P. 466 nn. 2, 6; Documents from Islamic chanceries, p. 47 nn. 31, 33; BSOAS, XXVIII, 3, 1965, p. 494, n. 35; see also S. M. Stern, ‘Three petitions of the FāṠimid period’, Oriens, 15, 1962, 172–209; idem, ‘Petitions from the Ayyūbid period’, BSOAS, XXVII, I, 1964, 1–32; IDEM, ‘Petitions from the Mamlūk period (Notes on the Mamlūk documents from Sinai)’, BSOAS, XXIX, 2, 1966, 233–76
25 It is, I think, important to adduce here the work of E. R. Curtius in order to stress the essentially literary nature of this development: ‘Dass die Rhetorik zur Brieflehre wird, hat nichts Überraschendes. Die Entwicklung war durch die Briefsammlungen des Plinius, des Symmachus, des Sidonius vorbereitet, aber auch durch die Staatsbriefe Cassiodors … Neu ist nun aber im II. Jahrhundert der Versuch, die ganze RHetorik der Lehre vom Briefstil unter-zuordnen’, see Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern, 1948, 83–4 s.v. ars dictaminis
26 Re scriptor regis: Kātib al-sirr, see Hoenerbach, Urkunden, xxi–xxxii; and for the role of the scribe as creator of the rhetorical canon, Grunebaum, G. von, Kritik und Dichtkunst, Wiesbaden, 1955, 148–9Google Scholar; an excellent example in Arabic is Abu'l-Husayn b. Wahb. the tenth-century author of Al-Burhān fi wujūh al-bayān, of which the entire fourth section is devoted to chancery rhetoric (edd. A. Maṭlūb and H. Hadīthī, Baghdad, 1967, 313–438)
27 Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ XIV, 70–1Google Scholar = Holt, P., ‘The Treaties of the early Mamlūk sultans with the Frankish states’, BSOAS, XLIII, 1, 1980, 68Google Scholar. The passage exhibits ‘chancery practice in the field’, so to speak, where a mutual demand for intelligibility resulted in a compromise with the rhetorical ideal
28 See BSOAS, XLII, 1, 1979, 152–3Google Scholar; Menage, V. L., IJMES, 12, 1980, 374–5Google Scholar, is sceptical about the role of the marsūm (ed. Moritz), regards the Turkish firmān (ed. Gökbilgin) as principal, and does not mention the Italian instrument (ASV, Documenti Turchi, busta XVIII) = Regesti Bombaci no. 63 (dtd. 21 Sha'bān 923/8 September 1517). Dr. Skilliter, op. cit., 102–3, acknowledges, more generously, the strength of the North African tradition, to which of course the Arabic marsūm belongs
29 See Brunschvig, R., La Berbérie orientals sous les Ḥafṣides, Paris, 1940–1947, I, 232–5 (the texts are printed, respectively, in Amari, I Diplomi arabi, v and 151 f., 326 f.; and Mas Latrie, op. cit., vi–vii and 269–310; together with a record of their disagreement as to the significance of this feature)Google Scholar
30 See Rossi, E., Storia di Tripoli e della Tripolitania (datta conquista araba al 1911), ed. Nallino, M., Rome, 1968, 281Google Scholar; for the French text, cf. Martens, G. De, Nouveau recueil de Traités, X, 52–7Google Scholar; and for the Arabic, Ismail, Umar b., Inhiyār ḥukm al-usra al-Qaramānliyya, Beirut, 1966, 448–51 (doc. 32)Google Scholar
31 Brunschvig, op. cit., I, 185; texts apud Amari, op. cit., 115–22; see also Barbera, D., Elementi Italo-Sicufo-Veneziano-Genovesi nei linguaggi Arabo e Turco, Beirut, 1940, 59–63Google Scholar, for a kind of phonetic transcription emphasizing the Sicilian (!) vernacular and its role in the diffusion of a Mediterranean lingua franca. Rather more sophisticated studies of this kind are now available in Pellegrini, G., Gli arabismi delle lingue neolaiine, Brescia, 1972Google Scholar
32 Jubayr, Ibn, Riḥla, Beirut, 1959, 275–6Google Scholar
33 Brunschvig, op. cit., I, 413–4: with reference to Mas Latrie, op. cit., II, 122, 142–3, 164, 167–9, 354 (i.e. from 1267–1445); see also Ashtor, E., ‘New data for the history of Levantine Jewries in the fifteenth century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Jewish Studies, (UCL), III, 1975, esp. 88–90 (drawing upon the Archivio di Stato, Venice)Google Scholar
34 See BSOAS, XXVI, 3, 1963, 503–30Google Scholar
35 Amari, , SMS, III, 611–33Google Scholar
36 Golb, N., ‘A Judaeo-Arabic court document of Syracuse, A. D 1020’, JNES, 32, 1–2, 1973, 105–23Google Scholar, being Oxford, Bodleian, MS Heb. d. 79 fol. 36 (not listed in Shaked's bibliography)
37 ‘A Judaeo-Arabic document from Sicily’, BSOAS, XXX, 2, 1967, 305–13Google Scholar; cf. Golb, art. eit., 108 n. 26
38 See Scheiber, A., ‘War der Name Balaam gebräuchlich bei den Juden?’, in The Muslim East: studies in honour of Julius Germanus (ed. G. Kaldy-Nagy), Budapest, 1974, 35–7Google Scholar
39 See Netzer, A., ‘Dāniyāl-nāma and its linguistic features’, IOS, II, 1972, 305–14, esp. 309Google Scholar
40 Giuffrida, A. and Rocco, B., ‘Una bilingue arabo-sioula’, Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli, N. S. XXIV, 1974, 109–22Google Scholar
41 Giuffrida, A. and Rocco, B., ‘Documenti Giudeo-arabi nel sec. xv a Palermo’, Studi Magrebini, VIII (Centro di Studi Magrebini, Napoli), 1976, 53–110Google Scholar; the 60 items include both the document cited in n. 40 ( = no. 5) and H. Bresc and S. D. Goitein, ‘Un inventaire dotal de Juifs siciliens (1479)’, Melanges d‘Arche’ologie el d'Histoire de VEcole Francaise de Rome, 82, 1970, 903–17 (no. 15), being ASP, Notaro Pietro Tagliante, 1175
42 Lexical treatment of this phenomenon is of course ancient: cf. Lokotsch, K., Etymologisches Wōrterbuch der europäischen Wōrter orientalischen Ursprungs, Heidelberg, 1927Google Scholar and the references supra n. 31 to Barbera and Pellegrinil; the very best example of the entire genre must be H., and Kahane, R. and Tietze, A., The Lingua Franca in the Levant (Turkish nautical terms of Italian and Greek Origin), Urbana, Illinois, 1958Google Scholar
43 See Schuchardt, H.. ‘Die Lingua Franca’, Zeitschrift filr Bomanische Philologie, 33, 1909, 441–61Google Scholar; Weinreich, U., Languages in contact, Paris, 1968Google Scholar: Hymes, D. (ed.), Language in culture and society, New York 1964Google Scholar; idem (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages, Cambridge, 1971Google Scholar; not without value is Cohen, M., Matériaux pour une sociologie du langage, Paris, 1971 (1956)Google Scholar
44 See Cohen, D., ‘Koiné, langues communes et dialectes arabes’, Arabica, 9, 1962, 121–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blau, J., ‘The Beginnings of the Arabic diglossia: a study of the origins of Neoarabic’, Afroasiatic Linguistics, 4, 1977, (issue 4 = pp. 1–28)Google Scholar
45 See BSOAS, XLI, 3, 1978, 587–8Google Scholar re Corriente, F., A grammatical sketch of the Spanish Arabic dialect bundle, Madrid, 1977Google Scholar; and cf. Ferguson, C. A., ‘The role of Arabic in Ethiopia: a sociolinguistic perspective’, Languages and Linguistics Monograph Series, 23, 1970, 355–68Google Scholar
