The administration of the laws by the dominant race was, of course, based upon the principles of Moslem jurisprudence. It was not unusual, however, for these laws to be either evaded or executed with a severity never contemplated by their author. Constant familiarity with bloodshed and habitual defiance of their authority by the populace had brutalized the rulers of Sicily. They affected a reserve characteristic of the worst forms of Oriental despotism. Their features were unknown to the great body of their subjects. From motives of caution, or to enhance the mysterious dignity investing their office, they gave audience and dispensed justice from behind a curtain which entirely concealed the throne. Like the most degenerate of the Persian Fatimites, they travelled unseen in litters, attended by the effeminate ministers of their vices. The few who attained to military distinction by active operations in the field died of disease; a large proportion of those who intrusted the conduct of campaigns to subordinates perished by the hand of the assassin.
In no part of the domain of Islam was the population of a more diversified character than in Sicily. Discord and disunion were the inevitable results of its composition. In the face of an enemy, the valor of its warriors was never questioned. In the excitement of a revolution, no man was safe from the dagger of his friend. Individuals deriving their origin from so many different countries naturally brought with them the experience, the arts, the industry, the accomplishments, the vices, of their respective nations. Under a dynasty of independent and resolute princes able to repress the outbreaks of tribal discord, Sicily would undoubtedly have risen to the most exalted rank in the scale of civilization. As it was, with all her serious impediments to progress, she had no rival excepting Spain among the kingdoms of Europe. Her armies wrested from the Byzantine Emperor one of the most valuable provinces of his dominions. Her navy for a considerable period enjoyed the maritime superiority of both the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. The country, in spite of civil commotion and the consequent insecurity, was densely populated. In 938 the inhabitants of the valley of Mazara alone amounted to two million,—half of whom were Moslems. The elegant luxury of Palermo surpassed in taste while it equalled in splendor the barbaric pomp of Constantinople. The domestic and social conditions prevailing in Germany, Italy, France, and England were incomparably inferior in all the qualities by which the advancement and happiness of nations are promoted to those, defective as they were, by which society in Moorish Sicily was organized and controlled. In the province of letters the Sicilian Moslems seem to have merited distinction not inferior to that achieved by their Andalusian brethren. A long catalogue of authors, whose compositions, for the most part, unhappily have perished, indicate the esteem in which literature was held, as well as the prodigal liberality by which the efforts of its professors were rewarded.
The influence of Sicilian civilization upon the Normans exhibits the counterpart of that exercised by the decaying genius of Rome upon the fierce and untutored barbarians. But the minds of the former were far better fitted to receive the impressions imparted by association and example than were those of the followers of Alaric and Alboin. They were somewhat accustomed to the conveniences and the luxuries of life, and not entirely ignorant of the amenities of social intercourse. They had travelled far and had insensibly made comparisons between the usages of many nations. The architectural remains of the mighty empire of the Cæsars had awakened their admiration. They were familiar with the defaced, but still awe-inspiring, monuments of Roman grandeur. Tradition, embellished with a thousand enchanting legends, had brought before them visions of the majesty and glory of the greatest powers of the ancient world. Intimate contact with the Greek colonists of Southern Italy, who still retained in a measure the graces and the refinement of their ancestors, gave them well-defined ideas of the civilization enjoyed by the original seat of literary superiority, of architectural perfection, of artistic excellence. Thus the Normans were ready, even eager, to receive from their Moorish vassals lessons in those elegant pursuits whose advantages they had long appreciated, but had never enjoyed. The Moslems, as a rule, were granted every courtesy by their Christian neighbors, who quickly recognized their superior intellectual acquirements. They celebrated in public, and without molestation, the festivals of their religion. The rich freely indulged their inclination for splendid attire and imposing retinues. They had their own ministers of justice and of worship, their markets, mosques, and judicial tribunals. The majority of the merchants of Palermo under the Norman domination were Mohammedans.
Reluctant, perhaps unable, to discriminate, the invaders grew corrupt, and the evils characteristic of a sensual and luxurious race were insensibly adopted with the benefits which its culture afforded. After the Norman conquest, the spirit of Moorish civilization still remained paramount. The Saracens formed no unimportant part of the military establishment of their conquerors, maintained both for service and ostentation. At the siege of Amalfi, in 1096, twenty thousand of them served under the Norman standard. In 1113, when Adelaide, mother of Count Roger, went to Ascalon to marry Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, she presented him with a band of Moorish archers splendidly uniformed in scarlet and gold. The forms of government observed by the emirs were retained. Moslem ministers and magistrates directed the administration of the state, regulated the finances, dispensed justice. The Arabic tongue continued to be not only the recognized medium of communication between all classes of society, but the vehicle of public acts and edicts, and the official idiom of the courts of law. Over the gateways of palaces constructed by the princes of the family of De Hauteville are still to be deciphered legends whose sentiment is unmistakably Mohammedan. The Norman coins were stamped with sentences from the Koran and with the date of the Hegira. The dress, the manners, the etiquette of public audiences, the habits of private intercourse, became essentially Oriental. The umbrella, an emblem of royalty borrowed from the Fatimites of Egypt, was borne over the heads of the Norman kings on occasions of ceremony. The robes of distinguished personages were interwoven with Arabic texts, whose characters and whose significance excited the pious horror of the orthodox. The regulation of the royal household was modelled after that of the emirate. The very titles of the public officials were Arabic. The education of youth was committed without reserve to learned doctors of the Mussulman or the Hebrew faith. In some of the harems of the Norman lords the inmates were all Mohammedans; in those of others, Christian damsels shared the favor and the affection of the licentious noble. No restrictions were imposed upon the religious prejudices of either, and it is related that the Christians, convinced by the arguments or the fascinations of their infidel associates, not infrequently became proselytes to the doctrines of Islam. Under the enlightened government of the Normans, persecution was unknown. Indeed, the vanquished people were regarded with such partiality that Count Roger absolutely forbade that any Moslem should, even by the most gentle means, be converted to Christianity. The clergy, unable to resist the prevailing influence, suffered their sacred edifices to be adorned with sentences from the Koran, whose monotheistic tendency accorded ill with the accepted maxims of patristic theology and the infallible edicts of ecclesiastical councils. From the balcony of the minaret and the tower of the cathedral the voice of the muezzin or the pealing of the bell called the pious to worship, and from the altars of every community arose in unison the praise of Allah and the invocation of the Triune God.
The traveller Ibn-Haukal and the geographer Edrisi have left us interesting and lively descriptions of the great Moslem cities of Sicily under Norman rule. Of these Palermo easily took precedence, not only on account of its being the metropolis, but by reason of the superior wealth, intelligence, and culture of its citizens. Of the number of its inhabitants no data have survived to enable us to form an approximate computation. They must have amounted, however, to several hundred thousand, as five hundred mosques were required for the worship of the Mussulmans, and, as a rule, the Christian population in every community equalled, if it did not exceed, that of the sectaries of Islam. Many of these structures were superb temples, whose costly decorations attested the liberality of the prince or the devotion of the multitude. Some were of vast dimensions; the largest could accommodate with ease seven thousand worshippers. The vanity of private individuals, whose wealth permitted them to indulge their taste for ostentation and offer an exhibition of zeal not always above suspicion, possessed mosques of their own, from which all were excluded save their own relatives, dependents, vassals, and slaves. But not alone in their places of worship did the prodigal and luxurious citizens of Palermo emulate the magnificence of their neighbors. The palaces of the rich and the great were unsurpassed by those of any Moslem capital excepting Cordova. The skill and delicacy of the labor expended upon them corresponded with the rare and precious character of the materials of which they were composed. The walls were encased with variegated marbles, the floors were formed of mosaic, the ceilings exhibited a labyrinth of geometric tracery relieved by brilliant coloring and resplendent with gold. Rows of aromatic shrubs filled the court-yards with their fragrance. The predilection of the Arab for water—the greatest treasure of the Desert—was everywhere manifested. Aqueducts composed of tiers of towering arches skirted the mountains in all directions. Canals traversed the plantations and gardens of the extensive suburbs. Fountains of classic design cooled the air of parks and promenades or quenched the thirst of the tired and dusty caravan. The city, from east to west, was intersected by the market-place, a wide street paved with hewn-stone and lined with shops filled with the most valuable commodities known to the commerce of the age. The central or older portion of the city was the seat of the court and the residence of the monarch. The suburbs almost entirely surrounded it, and contained the quays, the warehouses, the markets, the caravansaries, necessary to the traffic of a great maritime emporium. Like Cordova, Palermo was divided into five separate quarters, each of which was isolated from the others when the gates were closed. The houses were of blocks of polished stone put together with the greatest accuracy, the streets were lighted, the mansions of commanding height and symmetrical proportions, the habitations of the poor more commodious than the dwellings of many of the wealthy burghers of Paris and London. In the time of Ibn-Jubair, who visited Palermo during the reign of William the Good, the costumes and the manners of the Christians were not distinguishable from those of their Moslem vassals. The ladies wore veils of different colors and garments of mingled silk and gold. Dainty slippers, embroidered in arabesques with the precious metals, protected their tiny feet, jewelled ornaments of exquisite patterns glittered upon their bosoms, and the aroma of costly essences which enveloped them revealed their passionate love of perfumes. The fusion of races was nowhere so apparent or so remarkable as in the unrestricted intimacy maintained, and in the refined courtesies reciprocated by the once hostile nationalities which composed the population of the Norman capital. The amenities of social intercourse required the practice of politeness and of self-restraint even among enemies. In the time of William the Good cruelty and rapine were stigmatized as Teutonic vices.
The noble and elevating pursuits of science were not neglected under the Moors of Sicily and their intelligent and progressive conquerors, the Norman princes. Geography, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine were studied with diligence and success. Edrisi, whose descent from the royal dynasty of Fez has been obscured by the eminent reputation he attained as a geographer and a philosopher, made for Roger II. a planisphere which represented at once the surface of the earth and the positions of the heavenly bodies. From the minarets of Palermo, the Arab astronomer observed the motions of the planets, the periodical recurrence of eclipses, the relative positions and general distribution of the stars in space, by the aid of instruments invented on the Guadalquivir and the Tigris, and of tables computed on the plains of Babylon centuries before the Christian era. The Moslem thus consecrated to the prosecution of scientific research the towers of his most sacred temples, at a time when from the cathedrals of Europe doctrines were promulgated which menaced, with the severest penalties that ecclesiastical malignity could devise, every occupation which in any way contributed to the emancipation of reason or the intellectual progress of humanity. Astrology, that delusive study so flattering to the vanity of human nature, and so alluring to the imagination from the preternatural power supposed to be wielded by the charlatans who practised it, too often discredited the results of astronomical investigation; just as the vain and costly pursuit of the philosopher’s stone brought into disrepute at first the pre-eminently useful science of chemistry. The Sicilians were firm believers in the influence exerted by the heavenly bodies upon the actions and the destiny of man. The attempt to extract the precious metals from the most unpromising substances of nature had long engaged the attention of the Arab, and the cities of the island swarmed with impostors who cast horoscopes, interpreted dreams, and predicted future events by pretended communion with the stars, while the fires in the laboratory of the alchemist were maintained at the expense of innumerable dupes of their own credulity, whose hopes were sustained by mystery and fraud, while their purses were being systematically depleted. The superior intelligence of the higher classes afforded no immunity from these popular delusions; the noble embraced their principles with the same confidence and the same avidity as were displayed by the plebeian and the slave. The home of the alchemist was habitually frequented by the highest officials of the court, and the astrologer, with his peculiar garb, his long staff engraved with talismanic signs, his flowing beard, and his air of mysterious assurance, was the most welcome guest in the palaces of Palermo.
The Arabs of Sicily, with their brethren of Spain, owing to their extraordinary and thorough proficiency in medicine and surgery, were the most skilful practitioners in Europe. Their eminence in this profession was, to a large extent, shared by the Jews, who, as a race, were the recipients of royal favor and public confidence under the Norman as well as under the Saracen domination. The peer of the Moslem in every branch of scientific knowledge, the Hebrew brought to the study and application of the principles of the healing art the same keen perception and unerring tact which enabled him in all ages to rise to the most commanding positions in the mercantile world.
In their acquaintance with the mechanical arts the Sicilians were not inferior to their most accomplished contemporaries. Their hydraulic system was provided with all the appliances which had been tested by those nations whose arid soil required the artificial stimulus of irrigation. Their mills dotted the banks of every stream whose current afforded sufficient motive power for the propulsion of a water-wheel. The products of their looms were famous for their exquisite patterns and the fineness of their texture. They seemed to have also excelled in the invention and manufacture of contrivances for the measurement of time. A clepsydra belonging to Roger II. has been commemorated by an inscription which would indicate that it equalled in ingenuity and perfection the famous one presented by Harun-al-Raschid to Charlemagne. The hours were marked off by automatons, which dropped a corresponding number of balls into a metallic basin, a not unworthy predecessor of the modern clock. A considerable number of the astrolabes, which, having fortunately escaped the effects of ecclesiastical fury wreaked upon them as magical instruments and devices of Satan, are now preserved in the museums of Europe, are of undoubted Sicilian origin.
Abu-Layth, an architect and engineer, who had been educated in the schools of Sicily, assisted in the completion of the great mosque of Seville, erected during the twelfth century, and the globes of gilded bronze which crowned the summit of the Giralda, whose extraordinary dimensions and perfect symmetry excited the wonder of all beholders, were cast and raised to their places under his supervision. The superiority of the Sicilian Moslems in the construction and management of military engines has been already referred to in these pages.
The court of Palermo for more than a century was no less distinguished for the literary acquirements of those who, attracted by its reputation and the character of its society, took up their abode in its precincts, than for the scientific studies pursued with such ardor under the patronage of its sovereigns. During the Saracen rule, translations of those classical authors who wrote on philosophy and natural history were made; the perusal of the works of Aristotle, for whose doctrines the Moslems of the Middle Ages evinced such a remarkable predilection, was one of the favorite diversions of the learned; and the poems of Pagan Arabia were recited in the elegant idiom of the Desert, amidst the applause of believer and infidel alike, almost within hearing of the metropolis of Christendom. The prodigious stores of learning accumulated by the philosophers of the Alexandrian school, through the boundless munificence of the Greek dynasty of Egypt, enriched the libraries and cultivated the understanding of the scholars of Sicily. The writings of Hero, of Eratosthenes, of Euclid, and of Ptolemy were familiar to the students in attendance upon the academies and colleges of Palermo and Messina. The Syntaxis, the Geography, and the Optics of the latter have survived, mainly through the instrumentality of the Moors, the indiscriminate destructiveness of the barbarians and the calculating malice of the clergy, to convey to subsequent generations instructive and significant ideas of the philosophical attainments and mathematical knowledge of one of the most accomplished scholars of antiquity. The great work of Edrisi was compiled under the auspices of Roger II. The Arab was peculiarly fitted for the treatment of the comprehensive science of physical and descriptive geography. His information had been largely obtained by practical experience. He had served in campaigns conducted on the frontiers of civilization; in the capacity of a merchant he had traversed with the plodding caravan vast regions diversified with illimitable plains, lofty mountains, noble rivers; as a pilgrim he had performed his devotions at the cradle of the Moslem faith; in the tireless pursuit of learning he had prosecuted his researches over strange countries and among strange peoples; his features and his costume were familiar to the residents of the great European and Asiatic capitals; his peregrinations had extended from the Douro to the Indus, from the shores of the Baltic to the sources of the Nile. Thus endowed with especial qualifications, the Arab geographer was equally at home, whether recounting to a delighted audience the experiences of an extended journey or explaining to an assemblage of students the physical features of the earth and the relative distribution of land and water as depicted on the surface of a terrestrial globe. The work of Edrisi is an imperishable monument to the intelligence, the industry, the criticism, of the compiler, whose studies were confirmed in many instances by personal observation, and the practical value of whose undertaking was established by his scientific attainments as well as by the copious erudition of the illustrious monarch by whose command it originated and was brought to a successful termination.