THE ORIGINS OF THE SICILIAN KINGDOMsouth Italian kingdom.^5 Finally, the island of Sicily, rich in
grain-productive uplands, especially in the west of the island,
still preserved even in the late Middle Ages some of the
exotic character it had possessed as an Arabic island. The
coastline was known for its luscious gardens; sugar-cane and
other 'oriental' foodstuffs were grown in the Norman period,
but were less visible under Frederick II: he tried to revive
their production, but in reality it only recovered in the
fifteenth century. In the north-east of Sicily, around Messina,
the economy was more diverse, with extensive wine produc-
tion and local textile industries.^6
The conquerors of southern Italy were attracted more by
the reputation of the lands they coveted than by exact know-
ledge of their condition. They knew that the rulers of Sicily
and south Italy were exceptionally wealthy; they may have
heard that the sources of wealth lay partly in taxes on trade,
partly in the export of grain from royal estates, partly in the
efficiency with which the royal government was able to col-
lect the taxes it actually claimed. But it is more likely that
would-be conquerors were attracted by the sight of Sicilian
gold and silk or by news of the size of Palermo and Naples
(and therefore, they might assume, their wealth) than by
tales of sacks of grain. If they won their wars, it was through
experience of government that they learned the realities of
south Italian geography and resources.
The history of the late medieval Mediterranean was
moulded in significant ways by events in the south of Italy
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Before AD 1000,
the south of Italy was divided many ways: there were local dyn-
asties, who exercised authority over a primarily Latin Chris-
tian, Italian-speaking population in the small but wealthy
commercial centres of Campania such as Amalfi and Gaeta,
and in the Duchy of Naples; extensive tracts of the interior
were under the control of princes descended from Lombard
conquerors of the early Middle Ages; all these occasionally
owed allegiance to the Byzantine emperor, far away in Con-
stantinople, whose power was remote enough to prompt little
- R. Brentano, A new world in a small place. Church and religion in the
diocese of Rieti, 1188-1378 (Berkeley /Los Angeles, 1994), pp. 83-5. - S.R. Epstein, An island for itself. Economic development and social change
in late medieval Sicily (Cambridge, 1992).