Contriving coexistence : Muslims and Christians in the unmaking of Norman Sicily

Abstract

The historical drama characterizing the failure and collapse of the composite society of Latin Christian Sicily, culminating in the eradication of Islam under Frederick II, is accentuated by the long-standing impression that the Norman rulers had successfully transformed the island kingdom into a stable haven of multicultural coexistence in the preceding century. Historians may have to steer a middle course between two extremes. To reduce the Sicilian experience to a clash of civilizations would be a falsification of the past. To uphold Sicily as a successful case study of convivencia may be similarly reductionist, if not equally false. Whilst the image of Sicily as a haven of multicultural coexistence does not correspond completely to the documented realities of the island kingdom, it may also distort the investigation of the final decades of Islam in Sicily by artificially equating the collapse of a multicultural society with a breakdown of a benevolent regime of convivencia whose character and very existence remain open to historical debate.