Gail Simmons goes on the trail of a medieval Andalusian traveller and uncovers a distinctly Arab flavour to this southern Italian island.
"Can you see anything?" I'm perched on Carmelina's shoulders and peering through a tiny window into an old stone building deep in the Sicilian countryside. We're at Cefala Diana Arab baths, a relic of the former Islamic Emirate of Sicily, and I'm standing on my friend Carmelina because, although newly restored and open to the public, the bathhouse today is closed. And the reason I'm here, surrounded by the delicate wildflowers of a Sicilian spring, is my quest to find out more about Sicily's Arab heritage, a little-known feature of this most Mediterranean of islands.
For years I'd been visiting Sicily, loving its dramatic mountain scenery, limpid seas and delicious food: so different in feel from mainland Italy. As I'd explored the island I'd begun to notice similarities with the Arab world - the food markets, the flavours, the place names of Sicily had a familiar, eastern ring to them. But it was only when reading the memoirs of the Spanish Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr, shipwrecked off the coast of Sicily in January 1185, that I began to learn about the Arab presence on this island. Ibn Jubayr had visited Cefala Diana en-route to Spain, describing "a large place with many thermal springs which God throws up from the ground ... we refreshed our bodies by bathing in it".
Sadly, we can't even get close to the water. "It's almost as if they don't believe anyone will want to visit," says Carmelina, before we decide to cut our losses and travel on to Agrigento, in the south of the island. It had all started so well. Earlier that day I'd woken up to sunshine and breakfast in the whitewashed courtyard of a baglio, a fortified farmhouse and now a small rural hotel surrounded by olive and citrus groves on Sicily's far western coast. It was this part of the island that the Berber Aghlabids from the north coast of what was then known as Ifriqiyya (Africa) arrived in the year 827, tempted by the natural wealth, beauty and fertility of this land. As I'd tucked into homemade jams I was reminded of the cortijos - courtyard farmhouses of Andalucía, themselves echoing the enclosed houses I'd seen in North Africa and the Middle East.
In Andalucía the Islamic influence is unmistakable. The Arabs stayed longer in Spain: the last Moors were expelled in 1492, whilst in Sicily they were displaced by the Normans in 1061. In Andalucía, the great Islamic sites of Córdoba, Granada and Seville are renowned throughout the world; in Sicily the monuments are fewer, and you have to look harder for them. But for a brief period Sicily led the Muslim world in science, linguistics, literature and law, and you still find the Arab influence from a millennium ago embedded deep in the culture of this island.
Leaving Cefala Diana we wind south on a road lined with yellow broom, through a landscape of patchwork fields and meadows punctuated by cypress trees. These lush valleys, surrounded by rocky outcrops crowned by the occasional ruined castle, are the fertile heart of Sicily, but I wanted to see how this part of Sicily has altered since Ibn Jubayr passed through here, observing "land, both tilled and sown, such as we had never seen before for goodness, fertility and amplitude." Looking around me at the neatly-tended fields, it seemed very little had.
Unlike in Spain, where the conquest had been rapid, Byzantine Sicily took 75 years to fall completely under Muslim control. They divided the island into three administrative provinces and we were now driving through the westernmost, the Val di Mazara. Here was another small echo from a thousand years ago: the word Val, still used in Sicily today, is derived from the Arabic wali, the provincial ruler. And it was in Sicily's west that Ibn Jubayr, travelling 100 years after the Normans had taken the island from the Muslims, had most noticed the Arabs' continued presence.
"We have lots of Arabic words in our language," Carmelina says as we drive, "such as zaffarana (saffron), tunura (wood oven) and zibbibbu (a grape variety)." Under the Romans Sicily had been the breadbasket of the Empire; under the Arabs it now became the Muslim world's granary. But as well as grain, the Arabs introduced many of the plants still common in Sicily today: citrus fruits, sugar cane (the Italian word for sugar, zucchero, comes from the Arabic sukkar), dates, hemp, cotton. Sicily once again flourished after the dark centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
As the afternoon draws to a close we arrive at Favara (al-Fawwara), an unpretentious little town near Agrigento on the south coast of the island. We're here to see the obscure castle at Favara, residence of the Emir Ja'far. Apparently there are Arab traces in the castle, and I'm determined to see them before it has a chance to shut for the day. So we stop in the main piazza, a typically Sicilian square of proud civic buildings and proud old men in hats and coats despite the warm sunshine, and ask for directions to the castle.
Newly restored around 10 years ago, the creamy limestone walls glow in the late afternoon light. As at Cefala Diana we are the only visitors. The curator seems relaxed so we wander around at leisure, noting the Moorish flourishes - the cupola in the chapel, the blind arches and the doorways, their carvings distinctly Arabic in flavour. It's a satisfying end to the day, but it turns out to be just an aperitivo to the main course. It's Palermo, the modern-day capital of Sicily, that is the jewel in its Arabic crown.
In its heyday, Palermo had 300 mosques, and so famed was it throughout the Muslim world for its prosperity and beauty that it was also known simply as al-Madinah, or "The City". Ibn Jubayr, who spent a week here, waxed lyrical: "It is the metropolis of these islands...It dazzles the eyes with its perfection." Praise indeed from a man who knew Córdoba, the shimmering capital of al-Andalus. Here, more than anywhere else in Sicily, he felt at home as a Muslim.
Nowadays, instead of the "open spaces and plains filled with gardens, with broad roads and avenues" of Ibn Jubayr's description, today's visitors are met with boulevards of honking traffic and the faceless suburbs of any modern city. Once you reach the centre, though, there are oases of calm, gardens and piazzas where you can still sense the elegance that entranced Ibn Jubayr. And I'd found one of them, in the area known as La Kalsa. Here, two and a half millennia ago, the Greeks established a port in a city they named Panormos. To the Arabs it was al-Khalesa: "the chosen", and has survived a thousand years of invasions to remain one of the most atmospheric quarters of the old city. I set off to explore the narrow, maze-like streets that remind me of some of my favourite Arab cities - Tunis, Damascus, Aleppo - despite the medieval palazzi and ornate Baroque churches scattered throughout the district.
Palermo boasts the highlights of Sicily's Arab architecture, but they would have to wait until the morning. I was heading for Ballarò, one of Palermo's open-air food markets. These markets are one of Sicily's greatest Arab legacies, and have been doing roaring trade in this city for the past millennium. Ballarò, in the Albergheria district, has traded on the same site since the time of the Emirate. Probably named after the Arabic Suq-al Balari, even today Ballarò feels more souq than market.
I soon lose myself amongst the canvas-roofed stalls glowing under bare bulbs, lighting the array of silvery fish, vegetables, cheeses, spices, and cheap sunglasses. Scooters piled high with bulging bags weave between stalls and shoppers, and I'm intoxicated by the heady mix of fresh basil, fish and motorino oil, the collision of sounds, aromas and cultures of this city on the frontier between Europe and Africa. Today, many of the market's traders come from Tunisia, their guttural Arabic blending with the locals' Sicilian, a dialect which has absorbed so many of its words.
Stepping out into the hot spring sunshine the following morning I walk up Cassaro (a derivation of al-Qasr) to the former Emir's palace. I'm heading to the heart of Moorish Palermo: a cluster of buildings that includes the Cathedral and Arab-Norman Palazzo Reale. At the cattedrale an Arabic inscription on a column near the door is all that remains of the earlier mosque, though the cathedral's exterior of delicately-etched golden stone reminds me of Andalucia.
One kilometre and a frothy cappuccino later finds me outside the Palazzo Reale, Palermo's Royal Palace. This, evidently, is where Palermo's tourists have been hiding out. Built on the site of an older fortress, this imposing structure has been a seat of kings for hundreds of years. First the palace of the Emirs, then of the Norman kings who rebuilt the palace, it was occupied by the Spanish viceroys in the 16th century and now is the home of Sicily's regional government.
A short wait and I'm shepherded through the Capella Palatina to be dazzled by the Byzantine mosaics and magnificent wood-carved Islamic muqarnas covering the ceiling. Astonishingly, my guidebook dates these to the middle of the 12th century, a hundred years after the Norman conquest of Sicily. Reading further, it seems the Normans used Muslim craftsmen to undertake the work, so beginning a long trend of assimilation of Moorish culture into Christian Sicilian life.
And then I remember my literary companion, Ibn Jubayr. Washed up ashore here, he'd been surprised to receive a warm welcome from the Norman rulers, who promised him and his Muslim companions protection during their stay in Sicily. He'd also been astonished that the conquering "Christian women...follow the fashion of Muslim women, are fluent of [Arabic] speech, wrap their cloaks about them and are veiled."
Later that evening Carmelina joins me for dinner. Over pasta con sarde we discuss the continuing Arab influence on her homeland. "Even this dish, sardines flavoured with raisins, is a throwback to the Moorish love of agrodolce: sour and sweet," Carmelina tells me. We both agree this is an excellent reason to order a desert of cassata (qashatah), a rich cake filled with ricotta cheese and yet another Sicilian speciality with Arab ancestry.
