The Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily
Principal Investigator / Director: Jeremy Johns
Oxford participants: Daniel Burt; Jeremy Johns
Other Participants: not specified
Project Webpage: http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/adns/
Start Date: not specified
End Date: not specified
Funder: not specified
Partner organizations (inside or outside Oxford): not specified
Project Description:
Approximately eighty documents containing Arabic survive from the period of Norman and Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily (circa 1060 – circa 1250). They include both records of the Norman administration, such as descriptions of the boundaries of estates granted to Christian churches and lords, and registers of the Muslim families dwelling upon those estates, and documents issued under the authority of the Muslim cadi, such as property transactions. They also include commercial contracts, agreements governing the irrigation of agricultural land, records of boundary disputes, and documents binding Muslim peasants to pay a land tax and a religious poll tax (jizya) to their Christian lords. Together, the corpus provides a unique record of a Muslim society living under Christian rule.