A Revision Of Sardinian History 121
Walter Kaegi’s research on Olbia,15 were probably the prime Islamic targets in
the seventh century.
With its fortifications dismantled, fleet destroyed, and wealth plundered,
the island, stripped of its defenses, no longer posed a threat to the expansion-
ist strategies of Islam, nor did it even present a basic strategic objective of its
own. The payment of the Giz’yah in and of itself remains a controversial issue,
since report of a “payment,” could be a sort of literary topos tantamount to:
“the island recognizes the power of Islam and yields to it.”
3 The Possible Effects of Islam’s Extended Presence in Sardinia
From the reconstructions proposed in the last several years, it appears likely
that through their actions, Muslims split Sardinia in half, carrying out neither
a permanent occupation nor stopping at simple raids. Their arrival would have
crushed, at least temporarily, any attempt at open resistance.16 Indirect proof
for this assumption emerges from an analysis of the territory and an exami-
nation of the history and precincts of the archdiocese of Arborea, which was
founded by Pope Urban II in the late eleventh century over the ashes of the
ancient dioceses of Tharros and Forum Traiani. Santa Giusta, one of the three
suffragans of Arborea, suffered no interruption in its development; it was thor-
oughly united and not cleft into two distinct parts, as has generally been as-
sumed; indeed, it was Santa Giusta that split the archdiocese of Arborea in
half.17 This can be deduced from newly discovered data on the territorial sub-
division of west-central Sardinia prior to the eleventh century. Both the theory
claiming Santa Giusta as the heir of the ancient diocese of Forum Traiani, and
the one positing that the importance of Oristano supplanted that of Santa
Giusta in the course of the eleventh century, must be refuted as they do not
take into consideration the importance and pervasiveness of the Gregorian
reform. But, above all, they also fail to consider that displacement and new
15 Walter E. Kaegi, “Gightis and Olbia in the Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse and Their
Significance,” Byzantinische Forschungen 26 (2000), pp. 161–167; Walter E. Kaegi, “Byzantine
Sardinia and Africa Face the Muslims: Seventh-Century Evidence,” Bizantinistica 3 (2001),
pp. 1–25. Strong doubts regarding Kaegi’s reading, have nevertheless been recently voiced
by Piero Fois, “Il ruolo della Sardegna.”
16 Zedda, “Bisanzio, l’Islam e i Giudicati”; and Corrado Zedda and Raimondo Pinna, “La nas-
cita dei Giudicati. Proposta per lo scioglimento di un mito storiografico,” Archivio Storico
e Giuridico Sardo di Sassari, n.s. 12 (2007), pp. 27–118.
17 Zedda and Pinna, “La diocesi di Santa Giusta.”