Christians in Arab Malta (5) : the Latin conquest of Muslim Sicily started from Christian Malta

Abstract

In our two previous contributions, we discussed both Ibn Al Athir’s story about the reconquest of the fortress of Malta by the Byzantines in 982 and the attack on Drejba in 1039, and explained why these two stories are strongly inter-related. In this contribution, we wish to return to Al Athir’s work to discuss another reference to Malta, which complements these two events. Al Athir’s world history, the al- Kāmil fi t-tarīkh, was edited by Carl Tornberg and published in 14 volumes in Leiden (Holland) under the title of Ibn al-Athīr Chronicon quod perfectissinum inscribitur between 1851 and 1876. Al Athir covered what he considered to be the history of the world up to the year 1231, and his chronicle became a historical canon for anyone wishing to write about the Arabs. The first part of this work covers up to AH 310 (AD 923) and is an abbreviation of the work of Tabarī with minor additions. Ibn Athir also wrote a history of the Atabegs of Mosul at-Tarīkh al-atabakīya, which was published in the Recueil des historiens des croisades (vol. ii, Paris). Other works by Al Athir are Usd al-Ghdba, which contains an account of 7,500 companions of the prophet Muhammad (5 vols, Cairo, 1863), and a compendium (the Lubāb) of Samani’s Kitāb ui-A n.~db (cf. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld’s Specimen el-Lobabi, Gottingen, 1835).