A brief history of the Islamic invasions of Italy.

When we discuss the early Islamic invasions, our attention is usually drawn to the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), the Zoroastrian Sasanian Empire, Visigothic Spain, and the Frankish Kingdom under the rule of the mayor, Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer). Little, if any, attention is given to Italy, the birthplace of the Roman Empire and the eventual birthplace of the Renaissance. Italy was never fully conquered by Islamic marauders; much of the south came under direct Muslim rule, and much of central Italy fell prey to Islamic raids. Throughout this essay, I will discuss how Italy dealt with the Islamic menace and how it made it through to the other side.

Setting the Stage: To understand how Italy dealt with Islamic invaders, you must understand its history prior to the first invasion. The entirety of the Italian peninsula fell under the rule of Odovacer, a barbarian, in 476, and this kingdom would be short-lived, with Theodoric the Great and the Ostrogoths conquering the kingdom in 493.

The Ostrogoths were a minority surrounded by millions of Latins who, within this new kingdom, were near powerless; only a few notable Latin bureaucrats held any sway within this new state, most of the military and administrative power being in the hands of the Ostrogothic minority. But under the Ostrogoths, the Latins were respected and lived in similar conditions as they did under Roman rule. However, things would change in 536 when the Eastern Roman Empire, almost entirely Greek by this point, waged war in Italy. Throughout the war (536 to 553), Latins held little to no power and were utterly devastated. While by 553 the entirety of the peninsula came under Eastern Roman control, it would be short-lived because in 568 the Germanic Lombards invaded, conquering two-thirds of the peninsula.

Both in the Lombard-occupied territory and in the Eastern Roman territory, Latins could only hold significant power within the Church. This status quo would continue until 650 when the first Islamic raid reached Italy. It was, at the end of the day, a minor raiding expedition, but the Muslims were scoping out for conquest, as they usually did. It made logical sense for them to attack Italy due to one-third of it being under the control of the Eastern Romans, who were their arch-rivals at this point in time.

For the remainder of the 7th century, Italy only saw minor pillaging raids inflicted upon the peninsula as well as Sardinia. The first major confrontation between an Italian force and an Islamic force did not take place within the Italian peninsula but instead within the neighboring Kingdom of the Franks, modern-day France. When the Umayyad Caliphate raided deep within France, Charles Martel called upon the assistance of the Lombard King Liutprand, who in 735 crossed the Alps and met the Saracens in battle.

Unfortunately, we don't have great details regarding the Lombards' battle with the Saracens, but we can only assume they were victorious due to the fact that Saracen raids would cease within the Frankish Kingdom soon after.

Now, something important to note about the Islamic religion and Islamic conquerors—not just their campaigns within Italy, but their campaigns of conquest and terror across the world—is that they are very terrible at forming alliances. Theoretically speaking, the Lombards would make prime allies for the Muslims, having a shared enemy in the Eastern Roman Empire, but no such alliance was ever formed. Due to the fanaticism of the Islamic faith in viewing all non-believers as infidels who must be put to the sword, the Muslims, on more than one occasion, have shot themselves in the foot, refusing to compromise and cooperate with those who they should be allied with.

The Franks did not repay the Lombards' contributions to the war with the Saracens. The Franks under Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne would conquer the Lombard Kingdom, and from here on out, the political and social situation in Italy would change drastically, with a continued weakening of what little remained of Byzantine possessions and the growing influence of both the Franks and local Italian dukes.

This division would make it quite difficult for the Italians to form any unified resistance to the Islamic hordes, which would come full throttle into the Italian peninsula in the 9th century.

In 827, the Aghlabids, a recently formed dynasty that broke away from the Abbasid Caliphate, invaded Byzantine Sicily, laying siege to the ancient city of Syracuse. But the siege would thankfully end the next year due to epidemics and food shortages among the Muslim invaders.

The Byzantines soon went on a counter-offensive, sweeping through the Muslim strongholds held on the island, and by 829, the island was almost cleared of the Islamic menace. But this victory would be short-lived, with the Muslims soon gaining a foothold in western Sicily once again.

It wasn't just Sicily that their tentacles were encroaching on; the Italian mainland also fell victim. But in this case, the Muslims didn't start out as mere invaders. They were invited by the Duke of Naples into the mainland to help in his struggle against the Duke of Benevento.

The Muslims, many of them mercenaries or escaped slaves, would soon betray their Italian allies and go on a rampage throughout southern Italy, eventually culminating in the capture of the city of Bari from the Byzantines. They would go on to establish the Emirate of Bari, an independent state separate from both the Aghlabids and the Abbasid Caliphate, though it did, like most Muslim states at this point in time, pay lip service to the latter.

Back in Sicily, the Byzantines were faced with increasingly dire circumstances, with both the Aghlabids and the treacherous Duchy of Naples forming an alliance against their capture of the ancient city of Messina in 842.

The situation on the mainland wasn't much better. In fact, it was much worse, with most of central Italy, including the surrounding areas of Rome, falling into Islamic raids. Notably, the Basilica of Saint Peter was sacked. It looked as if the heart of Western civilization was going to fall into the hands of the Saracens, but it only had a savior from the most unlikely of places: the Frankish prince, son of the Emperor of Middle Francia, Lothair, crossed the Alps. The name of this prince, soon to be appointed King of Italy, would go down in history—a name so unique, so original, so distinguishable, that no one could ever possibly confuse him with any other Frankish or later French nobility. His name was Louis! All jokes aside, Louis II of Italy was perhaps one of the most competent and one of the most underrated and overlooked defenders of the European continent against the Saracen menace. He spent most of his life combating the Saracens.

He was crowned king in the ancient city of Rome by the Pope, just as his ancestor Charlemagne had been. Speaking of the Pope and the Papal States, they were far from a compliant force in Islamic conquest as they are today. They held an army, and Pope Leo IV called upon many Italian duchies to defend Italy against the largest Islamic invasion it had faced yet. The Muslims were finally put in their place in the Battle of Ostia, where they were utterly and humiliatingly annihilated.

( "the battle of ostia" by Raphael 1514)

After the battle, the few survivors were enslaved by the Italians, forced into labor to build a defensive wall that would serve to protect the Eternal City from further Islamic incursions.

Central Italy was saved, but southern Italy was almost completely under the rule of the Saracens. Most of these Muslims were not associated with any Islamic state; they were pirates, some of them exiles from Al-Andalus or North Africa. But this soon changed, with most of the Islamic states in southern Italy falling under the rule of the self-anointed Sultan Abdallah ibn al-Qasim, who, in the words of Charles Olman, was "the terror of South Italy." He may have found his own dynasty and his own empire within the peninsula, just as the Umayyads had done in Spain, if not for the warrior king Louis II, who united most of the rival dukes of Italy in opposition to the Islamic menace.

In 866, Louis and his allies laid siege to the city of Bari, and after five long years of struggle, the city fell, freeing it from the Islamic menace. Ten years later, in 880, the Emirate of Taranto would also fall, briefly freeing most of southern Italy from the Islamic menace.

But the island of Sicily was still largely under Muslim rule, with only small holdouts of Byzantine resistance in the western portions of the island. This would soon come to an end in 902 AD when Aghlabid Sultan Ibrahim II captured the city of Taormina, putting an end to centuries of Byzantine rule in Sicily and arguably ending a millennia of Roman rule within Sicily.

Ibrahim would soon land in mainland Italy, planning a conquest of the entire peninsula. But he soon fell sick and would die shortly after, leading to the overthrow of his empire by the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, who, due to their religion, were unpopular among their Sunni subjects in North Africa and thus couldn't afford to go on any conquests in the Italian mainland. So they just focused on retaining the island of Sicily within their domain, which they eventually granted de facto independence under the Kalbids in 948 AD. The Kalbids, like most Islamic dynasties at this point in time, were less focused on conquest and more focused on consolidating their rule, attempting to force the Shia Islamic faith upon the Sicilian populace. Many Sicilians did, in fact, convert to Shia Islam, most likely due to the jizya, a tax imposed on non-Muslims who lived under Muslim rule. If you converted, this tax would no longer apply.

The most notable aspect of Islamization in Italy happened in 962 when 1,400 children were circumcised back-to-back in a massive ritual to symbolize their conversion to Islam.

The long reign of the Muslims in Sicily would fortunately come to an end when the Normans conquered Sicily in 1053 AD.

Hope you enjoyed this historiography. I know this is different from my usual content, but I'm trying to branch out. Anyway, this was Dark Age Sage, and see you all on the next one.

References

The Dark Ages by Charles Oman

Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne