144 Bresc
south. In 1359 the north of the island reacted by establishing itself as a commune
in order to escape this alliance. It was known as the “Terra di Comune” and it tied
itself to Genoa through an act of voluntary submission, or vassalage.
1 Political Traditions: Unequal Dependency, Common Resistance
Sardinia has suffered an endemic vulnerability that is tied to the multiplicity
of its political centers. Nonetheless, the island put up an effective resistance
to the Muslim incursions, which, with the exception of the failed expedition
of Mudjâhid of Denia in 1015–1016, took on the form of raids rather than a co-
herent project of conquest. One interesting thing to note is that the Muslim
expeditions of 710–711 and 1015–1016 set out from Andalusia, whereas Sicily was
almost always attacked from Africa: different seas provided routes to the two
islands for their aggressors. Indeed, prevailing winds allow for rapid passage
across the 180 nautical miles separating Minorca from Sardinia, while Sicily
can be reached in one day’s journey from Africa.
However, Sardinia would subsequently find Genoese and Pisan footholds
on its periphery and would experience an incomplete Pisan conquest, as well
as a Catalan conquest that would prove very costly to the invaders, but suc-
cessful in the end. In waves, immigrant conquerors established themselves
on the periphery of the island. The coast was abandoned gradually, but early
on, and immigrants took advantage of the withdrawal of the population to-
wards the interior. Ibn Djubayr noted a “Jewish inhabitation” at Qawsamarka
(Capo San Marco), in other words an abandoned city.4 In a similar manner,
the coastal cities of Corsica, which dated from Roman times, would be erased
and the seats of the dioceses would be moved to small sites in the interior,
such as Vescovato. In the countryside, cathedrals were most often isolated,
without dwellings in the vicinity, as were the churches of the pievi, which
were the basic units of ecclesiastical organization at the center of a landscape
of dispersed hamlets.
In contrast to the vulnerability and the scattering of power in Sardinia, Sicily
was centralized. Nonetheless, Sicily faced a whole series of duly planned and
repeated conquests, as well as changes in political dominance: the Muslim
conquest of 827–900, the Norman from 1061–1072, the German in 1194, the
French in 1266, and the Catalan from 1392–1398. Power over the island was at
first in the hands of foreigners, but then the Normans fostered an attempt at
4 Ibn Djubayr, “Rihla,” trans. Paule Charles-Dominique, in Voyageurs arabes (Paris, 1995),
pp. 71–73.