Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 31
Church.83 Indirect sources from the same period suggest that Sardinian clerics
attended councils in North Africa, when Sardinia was administratively part of
Byzantine Africa, indicating that there was some form of organized church in
Sardinia.84
The traces of North African migration that are increasingly found in exca-
vations are revealing important new information about the Muslim world in
Sardinia. Michele Amari compiled a selection of early medieval sources for
archeologists, translated from the Arabic with a commentary.85 Its detailed
history of the Muslims in Sicily, written between 1850 and 1865, represents one
of the best narrative accounts of what happened, according to Arab sources.
Amari transcribed original documents for his well-known History, which de-
scribed Sardinians as originally African Rum (“Christians from the Roman
provinces”) and Berber (also from North Africa). The major source that Amari
cites for the island is Ibn-el-Athîr (710–711), who lists all the Muslim attacks
on Sardinia. Regarding the devastating attack of 752–753 by Abd-er-Rahmân,86
Amari relates that a subsequent peace treaty required Sardinians to pay the
al-jizya, a tax imposed upon subjugated non-Muslim people who were living
under the protection of an Islamic political authority during the eighth cen-
tury. Amari mentions only two more attacks, one in 935 and the last one by
Mujahid, whose brief presence was halted by the Pisans and Genoese by 1016.
Recent archaeological efforts add weight to speculation based on documentary
83 Paul Ewald and Ludo Moritz Hartmann, eds, Gregorii I papae Registrum epistolarum
(Munich, 1978); Norberg, Gregorii Magni.
84 There is mention of Sardinia in Louis Duchesne, ed., Liber Pontificalis, 2 vols (Paris, 1886–
1892); Paul Fabre and Louis Duchesne, eds, Le liber censuum de l’église romaine (Paris,
1910); Raimondo Zucca, “Johannes Tarrensis episcopus nella Epistola Ferrandi diaconi ad
Fulgentium episcopum de V quaestionibus? Contributo alla storia della diocesi di Tharros
(Sardinia),” Sandalion 21/22 (2001), pp. 113–136.
85 Michele Amari, Biblioteca arabo-sicula (Turin and Rome, 1880); Michele Amari, Storia dei
Musulmani in Sicilia (Florence, 2003 [1933]), vol. 3, pp. 8–13. See also, Francisco Codera,
“Mochéid, conquistador de Cerdeña,” in Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari. Scritti
di filologia e storia araba; di geografia, storia, diritto della Sicilia medioevale; studi bizantini
e giudaici relativi all’Italia meridionale nel medio evo; documenti sulle relazioni fra gli Stati
italiani e il Levante (Palermo, 1910).
86 Catia Renzi Rizzo, “I rapporti diplomatici fra il re Ugo di Provenza e il califfo ‘Abd ar-
Raman III: fonti cristiane e fonti arabe a confronto,” RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia
dell’Europa Mediterranea 3:2 (2002), pp. 1–24; Catia Renzi Rizzo, “Pisarum et Pisanorum
descriptiones in una fonte araba della metà del XII secolo,” Bollettino Storico Pisano 71
(2003), pp. 1–29; reprinted Berti, Renzi Rizzo, and Tangheroni, Il mare, la terra, il ferro,
pp. 279–312.