118 Zedda
thus remains frozen in interpretations—however authoritative—from the
last century. Subsequent significant studies are not lacking, and in the past 40
years important methodological innovations have emerged in other areas of
Italy and Europe. It is true that there have been some important recent works
that occasionally break with habitual lines of research, but their course is still
inconsistent, marked by problems in the historical framework and by fear of
abandoning the hitherto tranquil road.7
With this contribution, I wish instead to reformulate questions regarding
Sardinia and its historiography, both to try to achieve a better understanding
of the island’s peculiar status at the dawn of the second millennium, and to
contextualize with greater precision the role of the various actors and situa-
tions affecting it in this period: from local lords to the Apostolic See, and from
Muslims to the political reality facing the Tyrrhenian Sea in the twelfth century.
2 Islamic Presence in Sardinia?
In the reconstruction of Sardinia’s history within the scholarly frameworks of
the nineteenth century, the realization that the territory had been occupied
by or subjugated to Islam acquired such a complexity that it rendered the hy-
pothesis of a steady Islamic presence terribly difficult. This was in contrast to
the eighteenth-century historiographical tendency to accept the possibility.
Certainly the question of an Islamic presence in Sardinia cannot be reduced
to positivist affirmations of one kind or another, but an examination carried
out with the help of new methods of research and innovative questions is now
necessary and inescapable.8
7 For a good general overview of Sardinian historiography, see Anna Maria Oliva, “L’Istituto
storico Italiano per il medioevo e le fonti della Sardegna medievale,” http://www.isime.it/
index.php/edizioni-elettroniche/l-istituto-storico-e-la-ricerca-di-base-fonti-e-identita
-nazionale (accessed 28 August 2015).
8 Mohamed Mustafa Bazama, Arabi e sardi nel Medioevo (Cagliari, 1988); Giovanni Oman,
“Vestiges arabes en Sardaigne,” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 8 (1970),
pp. 175–184. See also, Catia Renzi Rizzo, “Pisarum et Pisanorum descriptiones in una fonte
araba della metà del XII secolo,” Bollettino Storico Pisano 71 (2003), pp. 1–29, especially p. 16;
Giuseppe Contu, “La Sardegna nelle fonti arabe dei sec. X–XV,” in La civiltà giudicale in
Sardegna nei secoli XI–XIII: fonti e documenti scritti: atti del convegno nazionale, Sassari, Aula
Magna dell’Università, 16–17 marzo 2001; Usini, chiesa di Santa Croce, 18 marzo 2001 (Sassari,
2002), pp. 537–549. For most recent research, see Piero Fois, “Il ruolo della Sardegna nella
conquista Islamica dell’occidente (VIII secolo),” RiMe. Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa
Mediterranea 7 (2011), pp. 5–26; Donatella Salvi and Piero Fois, “Parole per caso. Antiche