Sea of Faith

by Stephen O'Shea

  "holder of power": There are many English renderings of the word sultan, but I have gone with that given by the authoritative Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples (New York: Warner Books, 1991), 83.

  blinding fourteen thousand vanquished enemies: Or so goes the story of the battle of Clid-ion, in the valley of the Struma. Basil is said to have left one in every hundred men with one eye so that he could guide his fellows home. On seeing his great army so savagely mutilated, the Bulgarian tsar, Samuel, is supposed to have died of a heart attack. Of course, this story has had its debunkers. The most recent is Paul Stephenson, in The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), who argues convincingly that Basil's reputation as a ferocious victor was cooked up by Greek nationalists in the nineteenth century, when the competition over who would get which slice of the Balkans was at its greatest. Still, most Byzantinists still stand by the story, as it is recounted in several historical sources.

  At midcentury the basileus disbanded the thematic army of Armenia: That amounted to about fifty thousand men, or about one-fifth of the entire Byzantine army. Although all the Byzantinists consulted have much to say on this era of mismanagement, I have found particularly useful Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byiantine State and Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 583-612.

  the author of Chronographia: The highly entertaining and opinionated memoir of Michael Psellus is available to the general reader in the Penguin Classic edition entitled Fourteen Byiantine Rulers, trans. E.R.A. Sewter (London: Penguin, 1966).

  The reign of Constantine X Ducas made that of his predecessor look like a heyday of good governance: There was a brief attempt at reform between these two reigns under the stewardship of Isaac I Comnenus, but he died prematurely (shortly after being forced to abdicate). His family would later save the empire from itself following the disorders attendant upon Manzikert. The great basileus Alexius I Comnenus (1081—1118) was his nephew.

  "History provides few such vivid examples . . .": Friendly, Dreadful Day, 97.

  "pestiferous pimp": Cited in John Julius Norwich's Byzantium: The Apogee (New York: Penguin, 1993), 320. Norwich, a first-rate storyteller, gives an unusually impassioned account of the Great Schism (315-22), in which he lays the blame squarely on the Latins.

  "the harmony and grace of the Greek language . . .": The writer was Michael Choniates, the metropolitan of Athens, quoted in Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity (London: Pelican, 1980), 184.

  the Hautevilles: They were from the village of Hauteville, near Coutances. Their early careers fall outside the scope of the present work, which is unfortunate, given all of their colorful adventures. For an excellent recent scholarly treatment, consult G. A. Loud's The Age of Robert Guiscard (Harlow: Pearson, 2000).

  one of the greatest arrivistes of the Middle Ages: Norwich, Apogee, calls Guiscard "the most dazzling military adventurer between Julius Caesar and Napoleon" (307).

  "of obscure origin, with an overbearing character and a villainous mind": Anna Comnena The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, trans. E.R.A. Sewter (London: Penguin, 1969), 54.

  her uncle had been the patriarch: That was Michael Cerularius, a choleric intriguer of the first order and perhaps the most powerful of all patriarchs of Constantinople. He was partly responsible for the rise of the able Isaac Comnenus, only to be disappointed when he found he could not control the new basileus. Cerularius was eventuallly banished to an island in the Aegean, where he died, in 1058, in misery.

  "streams of tears fell from her eyes.": Both passages are from Attaliates, quoted in Friendly, Dreadful Day, 152.

  Psellus, in his memoir, fairly spits out his contempt for the new man on the throne: See Psellus, Fourteen Byiantine Rulers, 352. Never a shrinking violent, Psellus continues about Romanus: "He agreed that in all matters connected with literature he was my inferior (I am referring here to the sciences), but where military strategy was concerned it was his ambition to surpass me. The knowledge that I was thoroughly conversant with the science of military tactics . . . moved him not only to admiration, but to envy. So far as he could, he argued against me, and tried to outdo me in these debates."

  "make a stranger of himself . . .": cited in Friendly, Dreadful Day, 168. Psellus and Scyl-itzes echo these charges.

  No consensus of opinion, or definitive answer: Of all the discussions of this mystifying episode, the one found in Friendly, Dreadful Day, is, to my mind, the clearest and most accessible (i75-77)-119 that day in August 1071: There is, as usual, some dispute over the exact date. It is known that the battle took place on a Friday in August 1071. European historians have tended toward the nineteenth; Turkish, toward the twenty-sixth. Friendly, in Dreadful Day, discusses the discrepancy at length (178) and comes down on the side of the Turks. A significant passage from Attaliates states that a night just previous to the battle was moonless. If he did not mean overcast, then the twenty-sixth is the logical date, given the date of the new moon that month.

  the indigenous inhabitants of Anatolia would, over centuries, change identities: Vryonis, Decline of Medieval Hellenism, shows that this was a gradual and incremental process.

  Romanus summoned Nicephorus Bryennius and instructed him to take a small force out to investigate: For my reconstruction of the battle itself, I have relied principally on Attaliates, Bryennius, and Scylitzes, via Friendly, Norwich, and Vryonis.

  composite bows: As opposed to bows made of single piece of wood. The nomad variety, composed of a central stave of wood laminated with sinew on the back and cattle horn on its interior, could withstand greater amounts of tension and compression. It was, in short, a better weapon. For a discussion of its merits, see Hildinger, Warriors of the Steppe, 21—23.

  "Either I shall be victorious and fulfill my goal": Quoted in Mehmet Alta Koymen, "The Importance of the Malazgirt Victory with Special Reference to Iran and Turkey," Journal of the Regional Cultural Institute [Ankara] 5, no. 1 (1972), 9, and used as an epigraph by Friendly, Dreadful Day, 163. On the switch of Alp Arslan from sultan fighting a defensive war to jihadist prosecuting an offensive one, Vryonis remarks that the Battle of Manzikert was a turning point in Muslim historiography. As many of these subsequent histories were composed when crusaders were camped out in Syria and Palestine, such a switch is understandable. See Speros Vryonis, Jr., "A Personal History of the History of the Battle of Manzikert," Byiantine Asia Minor (Sixth/Twelfth Centuries) (Athens, 1998), 226-44.

  the shape of the crescent that they would soon bequeath to Islamic iconography: It is generally accepted that the Turks gave Islam the crescent, and perhaps the crescent and the star. There are, of course, dissenters arguing that it was the symbol of a pre-Islamic moon cult in Arabia, holding it to be a celestial conjunction viewed by the Prophet shortly before his first revelation, and advancing any of a number of esoteric theories. What is certain is that Turkic tribes used it in the very early medieval period and that the Ottomans made it the symbol both of their empire and of Islam. The croissant, the crescent-shaped pastry that originated in central Europe, is said to date from about the time the Ottomans were repulsed at the gates of Vienna. This too may be apocryphal.

  a feat of over-the-shoulder bowmanship: The old Romans knew this as "the Parthian shot," after their dextrous bowmen enemies in the east. Some claim that this is the origin of the phrase "parting shot," but I find that a bit of a stretch.

  "It was like an earthquake": Attaliates, quoted in Norwich, Apogee, 352-53.

  heterogeneous crowds of thirteenth-century Konya: On Rumi's death in 1273, his son wrote of the mourning in Konya: "The people of the city, young and old / Were all lamenting, crying, sighing loud, / The villagers as well as Turks and Greeks, / They tore their shirts from grief for the great man. / 'He was our Jesus!'—thus the Christians spoke. / 'He was our Moses!' said the Jews of him." Quoted in Annemarie Schimmel, Rumi's World (Boston: Shambhala, 2001), 31.

  he could see only the light of his Lord Saviour: T
his supremely distasteful story is related in George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byiantine State, trans. Joan Hussey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 345.

  CHAPTER 5: PALERMO AND TOLEDO

  George Maniakes: George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byiantine State, trans. Joan Hussey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 293-94.

  the great general fell victim to a whispering campaign: Maniakes, enraged at being relieved of command, raised an army and marched on Constantinople. He died en route in Bulgaria, felled by a lucky archer.

  the tenth-century Iraqi traveler Ibn Hawkal: He seemed to have liked Palermo less than he did al-Andalus. In his description of Palermo he laments not seeing anyone of any distinction, claims that the religious houses on the city's outskirts are just havens for layabouts, and complains that the Palermitans are too fond of raw onions. For the relevant passages of Ibn Hawkal, I consulted a portion of Michele Amari's 1845 translation, reproduced as "Metropole de l'islam mediterranean," in Henri Bresc and Genevieve Bresc-Bautier, eds., Palerme 1030—1492, Mosdique depeuples, nation re-belle: La naissance violente de Videntite sicilienne (Paris: Autrement, 1993), 49—51.

  cotton, hemp, papyrus, sugarcane, oranges, lemons: Aziz Ahmad La Sicile islamique, trans. Yves Thoraval (Paris: Publisud, 1975), 44.

  The scars of the modern era: The scars, and the reasons for them, are artfully described in Peter Robb, Midnight in Sicily (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1998).

  only now being restored to stem the tide of fatiscente: The historic center was repeatedly bombed by the Allies in 1943, destroying or damaging many old buildings. The go-go years of irresponsible development, much of it sponsored by Mafia interests, lasted until the late 1980s. In 1997 a master plan for the City of Palermo was adopted. Its aim is to curb the construction of tower blocks and breezeways and to pour money into restoring the extensive old quarters of the city. See Adriana Chirco, Palermo, trans. Maria Letizia Pellerito, ed. David Russell (Palermo: Dario Flaccovio, 1998). I found it to be by far the best of the concise guides to the architectural heritage of the city.

  a summer pavilion of Norman kings: It was commissioned by Roger's son, William I, but was finished only in the reign of William II, probably in 1167. The term aniiatu in the Sicilian dialect means "well-dressed."

  "In the park there is also a great palace . . .": Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, trans. M.N. Adler and A. Asher (New York: Joseph Simon, 1983), 137-38. It is thought that Benjamin visited Palermo in about the year 1170.

  at the village of Balhara: Gianni Pirrone, "Eau et jardins, l'invention du paradis," trans. Henri Bresc and Evelyne Hubert, in Bresc and Bresc-Bautier, Palerme 1030—1492, 60.

  scores of biblical and devotional scenes: There are also contemporaneous scenes, including the portrait of the building's benefactor, King William II, who reigned from 1166 to 1189. One of the more interesting features of these scenes is a portrait of Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury murdered on the orders of King Henry II of England in 1170. Since the church was under construction at the time, this mosaic must be one of the very first representations of Becket, who became one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. In a further twist, King William's queen was Joanna (or Joan) Plantagenet, schooled in Poitiers by her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sent out to be married at age seven to Sicily, escorted by her big brother Richard Lionheart. Her father was Henry II, the monarch who had had Becket killed. The pride of place given Becket at Monreale might have been a gesture of atonement on the part of Joanna. The relations are discussed, entertainingly, in Mary Taylor Simeti's Travels with a Medieval Queen (London: Phoenix, 2002), 67—70, and in John Julius Norwich's The Kingdom in the Sun (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 320. On her husband's death in 1189, the still-young Joanna was taken under the wing of the crusading Richard Lionheart, who proposed that she marry the brother of Saladin. This wild idea came to nothing, and Joanna ended up wedding Raymond VI of Toulouse, the count who would be set upon for his pro-Cathar leanings in the Albigensian Crusade. Their son, Raymond VII, put up the last great resistance to the swallowing-up of Languedoc by the kings of France.

  Some claim that the liturgy in many Norman Sicilian churches: Henri Bresc bases this claim about Arabic liturgies on the account of a fourteenth-century German wayfarer, Ludolph de Sudheim. See Henri Bresc, "Une culture solide, un Etat faible," in Bresc and Bresc-Bautier, Palerme 1030—1492, 34.

  "dressed in robes of gold-embroidered silk . . .": Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibnjubayr: A Mediaeval Spanish Muslim visits Makkah, Madinah, Egypt, Cities of the Middle East and Sicily, trans. Roland Broadhurst (New Delhi: Goodword, 2003), 350. After admiring the Christian women, he adds guiltily, "We invoke God's protection for this description which enters the gates of absurdity and leads to the vanities of indulgence, and seek protection also from the bewitchment that leads to dotage." A page later he asks God for something somewhat different, in describing a town near Trapani: "Near to it [a fortress] on the mountain the Rum have a large town, the women of which are said to be the fairest of all the island. God grant that they be made captives of the Muslims."

  by backing a rival contender to the throne of St. Peter: Anacletus II (1130-38). Although this "anti-pope" had more support than the man who gained official sanction (Innocent II), he ran up against the formidable opposition of Bernard of Clairvaux and the Germanic emperor. The deal with Roger, no friend of the Germans, was simple: Anacletus would make him a king, and Roger would recognize him as pope. Anacletus fades from history eventually, but Roger's claim to kingship would eventually be recognized, politics obliging, by the legitimate succession of popes. See J.N.D. Kelly, The Oxford History of Popes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 169—70.

  "King Roger, powerful through the grace of Allah": al-malik Rujar al mu'tan b-llah. Quoted in Houben, Roger II, 121. He writes of this particular coinage: "On the reverse there was a cross with the Greek legend, 'Jesus Christ conquers' (IC XC NI KA). This new form of [coin] was a compromise between the title of a Muslim sovereign and a Christian motto."

  George of Antioch: A shadowy but very powerful figure in Roger's realm. Prior to being hired by the Normans, he had commanded the forces of the Zirid dynasty based in Mahdia, Tunisia. His career may be taken as a sign of the competitive market for learned and able officials among Christian and Muslim states. It is unclear to which faith he subscribed at the beginning of his life.

  amir al-umara: Ahmad, La Sicile islamique, 69.

  "king of Sicily, of the duchy of Apulia and of the principality of Capua": Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, trans. Graham A. Loud and Diane Milburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 67.

  distinctly unorthodox Islamic figurative scenes: Norwich, Kingdom in the Sun, calls the ceiling stalactites "the most unexpected covering to any Christian church on earth." His entertaining passage on the scenes depicted is worth quoting at length: "By the middle of the twelfth century certain schools of Arabic art had been jockeyed—principally by the Persians, who had never shared their scruples—out of their old abhorrence of the human form, and the tolerant atmosphere of Palermo led them to experiment stull further. The details of the paintings are difficult to make out from floor level, but a pair of pocket binoculars will reveal, amid a welter of animal and vegetable ornamentation and Kufic inscriptions in praise of the King, countless delightful little scenes of oriental life and mythology. Some people are riding camels, others killing lions, yet others enjoying picnics with their harems; everywhere, it seems, there is a great deal of eating and drinking going on. Dragons and monsters abound; one man—Sinbad perhaps?—is being carried off on the back of a huge four-legged bird straight out of Hieronymus Bosch" (76).

  Sainte Chapelle: This thirteenth-century sanctuary—thus a century younger than the Palatine Chapel—was commissioned by King Louis IX (St. Louis) of France. By an odd coincidence, pieces of Louis are enshrined in an altar in Monreale—he died on crusade in Tunisia in 1270 and his remains were tak
en to Sicily.

  "This was made in the royal factory for the good fortune . . .": The translation is by Jeremy Johns, quoted in Houben's Roger II, 125. As given in this source, the translation puts in square brackets all the possessive pronouns; I have taken the liberty of eliminating the brackets for the sake of readability. The cloak or mantellum may be viewed at the treasury of the Hofburg in Vienna.

  (many of which were handled by Arab civil servants): The Norman Sicilian exchequer was known as the diwan, an Arabic term that gave Italian aduana and French douane. For a scholarly overview of its functioning, see Donald Matthew, The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 219-28.

  "His knowledge of mathematics and applied science was boundless": Al-Idrisi, from the preface to the Book of Roger, quoted in Houben, Roger II, 104.

  Salerno translators: The most famous of them was Constantine the African. An eleventh-century Arab Christian born in Carthage, he eventually became a monk at Montecassino and produced a prolific amount of work culled from Arabic medical libraries.

  Although his origins are disputed: Houben, Roger II, states that al-Idrisi was a descendant of the last Hammadid prince of Malaga but then allows in a note that some scholars believe he was a native Sicilian from Mazara or perhaps a Moroccan (102—03). Whatever his provenance, it is his destination—Palermo—that is important.

  The delight of he who looks to travel throughout the world: There are many, many different renderings of the original Arabic title Nujiat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq, which range from The Delight of Him Who Desires to Journey through the Climates to The Avocation of a Man Desirous of a Full Knowledge of the Different Countries of the World. Jon Fasman's novel, The Geographer's Library (New York: Penguin, 2005), has great fun with al-Idrisi's work.

  he appears to have truly loved his wife: See Houben, Roger II, 65-66. Roger remarried fifteen years after the death of Elvira, having satisfied himself only with mistresses before then. Elvira died in February 1135.