Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 39
Corrado Zedda’s chapter clarifies the challenges associated with surviving
documents in Sardinia due to scarcity and forgery. He raises the question of
the possibility of Muslim communities settling on the island in the period
preceding the first millennium (ca. 800 to 1000 AD), and of whether Muslim
attacks on the Italian peninsula were prepared from Sardinia. This could not
have happened—he adds—if the Byzantine defensive system was still in
place. By looking at early Islamic maps, Zedda identifies Muslim landing areas.
Based on recent finds tied to Andalusia, Zedda further suggests that Tharros,
in the region of Sulcis, near Oristano, was likely the largest Islamic settlement,
whose population mingled with the local inhabitants until the year 1015, when
Mujahid, the lord of Denia (Balearic Islands), attacked Sardinia with his fleet.
At this time, Christian kings were beginning to put pressure on Muslim settle-
ments on the Iberian Peninsula. Sardinia now became a frontier battleground
foreshadowing the Crusades. The church petitioned Pisan and Genoese armies
to intervene and reassert Christian influence over Sardinia, to remove a base of
constant Muslim threats against Rome. Zedda then continues to explain, care-
fully, why and how the institution of the four Giudicati was established in the
eleventh century, during the Gregorian Reform. Thus, the church sanctioned
authority over the “ancient lost dioceses” of the sixth century. His point is con-
firmed by a detail that occurred in 1073, when all four districts were recorded
for the first time.
The widening of the lens continues in the next chapter, wherein the well-
known French scholar on Sicily and the Mediterranean, Henri Bresc, ap-
proaches Sardinia in comparison to Sicily and Corsica in the Mediterranean
context.109 Here, Bresc summarizes key moments of exchanges between the
three islands. The history of the intricate interaction between these islands
began many centuries before the Middle Ages. Bresc deftly elaborates the
complex history of relations that these islands had with the diverse centers
of power and commerce surrounding the Mediterranean. Each island is dis-
cussed as an individual entity and contrasted with its neighbors. Geographic
location impacted the peoples who would attempt to conquer the islands, and
the resulting chronicles. For example, Bresc draws upon his translation of the
Sicilian geographer Al-Idrisi, from which he determined that Arab expeditions
Corrado Zedda and Raimondo Pinna, “La nascita dei giudicati: proposta per lo scio-
glimento di un enigma storiografico,” Archivio storico e giuridico sardo di Sassari n.s. 12
(2007), pp. 5–145.
109 Henri Bresc, Un Monde méditerranéen: économie et société en Sicile (1300–1460) (Rome,
1986); contra see Stephan R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social
Change in Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992).