Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 21
Recent work in English by Walter Kaegi, who has written widely on Byzantine
North Africa and the western boundaries of the empire in the Mediterranean,
suggests Constantinople’s control over Sardinia must have been tenuous, at
best, given that since the seventh century, Arab “raiders,” possibly acting in
concert with Lombard forces, had their run of Sardinia (at first against Olbia—
facing Rome) and other supposedly Byzantine port islands, such as Gightis and
Djerba (off the coast of present-day Tunisia).44 Comparisons between Sardinia
and other islands are starting to offer alternative readings and possible models
for Sardinia. André Guillou’s research into nature of the population of Cyprus,
an island admittedly closer to the Anatolian coast, proves that there was co-
habitation between Byzantine and Arab populations, living in citadels typi-
cally associated with Muslim communities.45
An up-to-date introduction to the early forms of Christianity practiced in
Sardinia can be found in Pier Giorgio Spanu’s volume, together with Raimondo
Turtas’s seminal Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna.46 For a general review of
L’Africa Romana: lo spazio marittimo del Mediterraneo occidentale, geografia storica ed
economia: atti del XIV Convegno di studio, Sassari, 7–10 dicembre 2000, eds M. Khanoussi,
Paola Ruggeri, and Cinzia Vismara (Rome, 2002), pp. 1249–1262. For earlier classical and
late antique underwater activities on both islands, see Raimondo Zucca, Insulae Sardiniae
et Corsicae: le isole minori della Sardegna e della Corsica nell’antichità (Rome, 2003); Jean
Michel Poisson, “Les ports de la Sardaigne et le commerce mèditerranèe au Moyen Àge,”
in Les ports et la navigation en Méditerranée au Moyen âge: actes du colloque de Lattes,
12, 13, 14 novembre 2004, eds Ghislaine Fabre, Daniel Le Blévec, and Denis Menjot (Paris,
2009), pp. 161–176; Pinuccia Francesca Simbula, L’organizzazione portuale di una città
medievale: Cagliari XIV–XV secolo (2012); Pinuccia Francesca Simbula, “Fonti marittime
e commerciali: porti e mercati nel Mediterraneo tardo medievale,” in Meloni, Oliva, and
Schena, Ricordando Alberto Boscolo.
44 Walter Emil Kaegi, “Gightis and Olbia in the Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse and
their Significance,” Byzantinische Forschungen 26 (2000), pp. 161–167; Walter Emil
Kaegi, “Byzantine Sardinia and Africa Face the Muslims: Seventh-Century Evidence,”
Bizantinistica 3 (2001), pp. 1–25; Walter Kaegi, Muslim Expansion and Byzantine Collapse
in North Africa (Cambridge, 2010); Walter Kaegi, “Byzantine Sardinia Threatened: Its
Changing Situation in the Seventh Century,” in Corrias, Forme e Caratteri della presen-
za bizantina, pp. 43–56; Elizabeth Fentress, A. Drine, and Renata Holod, eds, “An Island
through Time: Jerba Studies vol 1. The Punic and Roman Periods,” Journal of Roman
Archaeology Supplementary Series 71 (2009).
45 André Guillou, “La lunga età bizantina: politica ed economia,” in Guidetti, Storia dei Sardi
e della Sardegna, pp. 333–334.
46 Spanu, Insulae Christi; Turtas, Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna.