150 Bresc
Byzantine lines. These ships were capable of oversea interventions and could
stand up to the navies of the city-states. Around 1190, Frederick II put an end to
the “Sicilian exception” and brought the Sicilian naval forces to harbor.
In 1282, the Angevin kingdom split into two competing states, which were
both abundantly armed as a result of the lengthy conflict that pitted them
against one another. The Strait of Messina became a border once again and
was ferociously fought over for the next 20 years. Never have the two factions
in southern Italy armed and lost so many galleys at the same time, all of them
engaged in conflicts over the straits. The naval defeats of the Angevins would
enable the Aragonese armies to pass through them and to maintain secure po-
sitions in Calabria, starting in 1282, and especially from 1296 to 1302.
Neither Sardinia nor Corsica experienced great moments of naval war-
fare, nor did they seek to become naval powers. But, their ports, especially
Bonifacio, Calvi, Boss, and Alghero, no doubt provided shelter for pirates. Ibn
Djubayr attested to such an encounter between one of his Andalusian ship-
board companions and a group of 80 Muslims, near Qawsamarka. Piracy on
the part of the smaller lords—Doria of Sardinia, the Genoese of the cape of
Corsica, and the Corsicans of Cinara—who combined robbery at sea with rob-
bery on land, did little for the anemic commerce of the islands and contributed
to their impoverishment.
4 The Management of the Interior Space: A Low Level of
Demographic Dynamics
Sardinia and Sicily were both characterized by small and sometimes dwin-
dling populations. There were slightly more than 400,000 inhabitants in Sicily
towards the end of the thirteenth century; in 1376, about 60,000 homes and
a little more than 300,000 inhabitants were counted; around 1434–1439, the
population continue to decline to about 250,000 to 290,000; in 1478, it was
up 400,000 again; and in 1501, the population of Sicily reached 576,000.13 In
Sardinia, the combination of epidemics and civil war reduced the population
from some 116,000 around 1320, to 85,000 around 1355; it would subsequently
only increase to just fewer than 122,000 by 1485.14 The cities were particular-
ly underpopulated, a fact which drew anxious attention from the Aragonese
13 Henri Bresc, Un Monde méditerranéen: économie et société en Sicile (1300–1460) (Rome,
1986), pp. 61–65.
14 John Day, “Malthus démenti? Sous-peuplement chronique et calamités démographiques
en Sardaigne au Bas Moyen Âge,” Annales ESC 30:4 (1975), pp. 684–702.