Gli arabi e la Sardegna. Un’introduzione [Book review]

Abstract

Until recently, Sardinia figured in Mediterranean historiography chiefly as a peripheral victim of ninth- and tenth-century Islamic incursions or as a source of isolated Arabisms for historical linguists. Langone and Mion’s study decisively recentres the island by integrating Arabic chronicles, Kufic epigraphy, dialectal data, and modern press sources into a continuous analytical arc spanning over a millennium. Set alongside Byzantine and Latin evidence, this composite archive reveals Sardinia as a recurrent, if irregular, waypoint within Arabic intellectual and cultural geography, complicating conventional medieval-versus-modern demarcations in Mediterranean scholarship.