The Kingdom in the Sun (40 page)

Omar did as he was bid. On
25
February
1156
the native population of Sfax rose up and massacred every Christian in the city. William, hearing the news, at once sent over an ambassador to demand the governor's surrender; if he did not give himself up immediately, his father's life would be forfeit. On his arrival, however, the ambassador was stopped at the gates; and the next morning he was met
by
a long funeral procession following a coffin. With it came a message from Omar. It read: 'He who is being buried today is my father. I remain in my palace to mourn his death. Do with him as you will.' The ambassador returned to Palermo to report, and old Abu al-Hassan, praising Allah with his last breath, was led to the gallows on the banks of the Oreto and hanged.
¹

But the collapse of William's North African Empire had begun. The islands of Djerba and Kerkenna followed where Sfax had led, and some time during the year
553
of the Hegira—between 2 February
1158
and
22
January
1159
—the signal was given for revolt in Tripoli itself. By the middle of
115
9 only Mahdia, with its suburb of Zawila, was left in Sicilian hands. Thither had flocked all William's remaining Christian subjects in Africa, arriving in such numbers that a new Archbishop had to be installed to minister to them all. His ministry was short-lived. Already three years previously the local Muslims had made one attempt to take over the city, failing only because of the opportune arrival of a Sicilian fleet; now the Almohads themselves appeared in strength under their leader Abd al-Moumen firmly resolved to eradicate the last traces of Christian domination from the continent. Mahdia was ringed by land and sea, and on 20 July the siege began.

For the first few weeks, morale in the beleaguered city remained high. There was a garrison of three thousand men, provisions were plentiful and no one doubted that a fleet would soon be on its way from Palermo with relief. Sure enough, on 8 September there it was—no less than a hundred and sixty Sicilian vessels, hastily recalled from a raiding expedition to the Balearics, under the command—surprisingly, in the circumstances—of King William's chief eunuch, a converted Muslim from Djerba who had been baptised in the name of Peter. The situation appeared to be saved; Abd al-Moumen, horrified at the size of the navy now bearing down upon him, even ordered sixty of his own ships to be beached so that, if the forthcoming battle went against him, he and his men should at least have some means of escape.

He need not have worried. Hardly, it seems, had battle been joined outside the harbour mouth when Peter's flagship suddenly turned about and made with all speed for the open sea; and the others followed. The Almohads, taking full advantage of their good

¹
This story is told by no less than three of the principal Arab sources for Norman Sicily—Ibn al-Athir, At-Tigani and Ibn Khaldun, the last two writing as late as the fourteenth century. The heroism of the two Al-Furriani was not, it seems, quickly forgotten.

fortune, set off in pursuit and captured seven or eight of the Sicilian vessels before returning jubilantly to port.

What had happened ? Hugo Falcandus, who can always be trusted to interpret everyone's actions in the unkindest possible light, has no doubts on the matter. Peter, he points out, was, 'like all the eunuchs of the palace, only in name and dress a Chrisdan, and a Saracen at heart'. It followed that his retreat must have been due not to incapacity or cowardice, but to treachery pure and simple. The other chroniclers are more charitable; they make no suggestion of any betrayal, and at-Tigani even quotes an eye-witness account by a certain Ibn Saddad, according to whom the Sicilian fleet had been scattered by a gale and was attacked by the Muslims before it had time to reform. This, or some similar catastrophe, seems to have been the true explanation; for nowhere do we find any record of disciplinary action taken against Peter on his return to Palermo. On the contrary, he had a long and distinguished political career before him. Clearly he was no George of Antioch; but there is no evidence, apart from Falcandus's unsupported testimony, that he acted with dishonour.

The same, alas, cannot be said for the Sicilian government. The garrison held out bravely for another six months, confidently awaiting another relief expedition; none came. At last, when supplies were running so low that the men had begun eating their horses, they sent Abd al-Moumen an offer. Let him allow one or two of their number to go to Palermo and ascertain, once and for all, whether any further help could be expected; if the answer was negative, the garrison commander would surrender the city forthwith. The request was granted. The emissaries left, and soon afterwards returned with the sad and, to the Christian community of Mahdia, almost unbelievable news: in Palermo, North Africa was already considered lost. It had quite simply been written off. On
11
January
11
60 Mahdia surrendered. The garrison were given safe conduct, with arms and baggage, back to Sicily.

Falcandus, it is hardly necessary to add, suggests that the Almohad leader was in contact with the palace eunuchs in Palermo and already knew in advance of William's decision. This theory, like so many others from the same pen, can probably be discounted; but there remains another more important and more intriguing question. Why did William and Maio let North Africa go so easily ? In their European policy they had proved—once the King had shaken off his initial inertia—vigorous, energetic and imaginative. How could they now watch, impassively, while the North African Empire crumbled before their eyes? It was not, after all, only during the siege of Mahdia that this apathy had come upon them; there indeed they had made at least some attempt to fight back. But what of Sfax and Djerba, of Kerkenna and Tripoli? In none of these places had there been more than a token resistance, if that. In
11
56,
admittedly, the Sicilian forces were fully extended on other, more important fronts; but by
11
60
there were no enemies to occupy them elsewhere, and still there was no sign of any counter-offensive—any move, even, military or diplomatic—to regain their former possessions. What held them back?

These questions also occurred to William's subjects at home, many of whom lost no time in blaming Maio for the loss of the overseas empire; and the Emir of Emirs became more unpopular than ever. But in fact, when we look back over these years, his apparently feeble attitude is shown in its proper light and becomes comprehensible. He was playing for higher stakes. By now the pattern of Italian politics had become infinitely more complex and more challenging than in the days of Roger II and George of Antioch, when the African territories had been conquered. Suddenly there had appeared a chance of gaining the moral leadership of all Italy in its emerging struggle against German imperial power; and moral leadership today could mean political leadership tomorrow.

To achieve it, however, Sicily must have freedom of action. With two Empires, a Papacy and an endless number of independent and semi-independent city-states to deal with, to say nothing of an endemic revolutionary situation within her own borders, she could not afford to indulge in enterprises and adventures outside her logical sphere of influence. And, as Maio was intelligent enough to understand, North Africa was well outside. To recover it would mean not just the despatch of an expeditionary force, the siege and capture of a city or two. It would mean the forcible subjection of a whole people and the breaking of a great power—for the Almohads, with an Empire which already extended from the Atlantic to the frontiers of Egypt and from Andalusia to the southern limits of the Sahara, could have held their own against virtually any European army or armies that might have been thrown into the field against them.

The old principle still held good—expeditionary forces could make conquests, but they could not hold them. The fact had been proved time and time again; to it, Sicily owed her continued existence as a nation. Those who forgot it paid dearly for their forgetfulness. Maio of Bari had no intention of falling into the same error himself.

12

MURDER

This Maio was a very monster; indeed, it would be impossible to find vermin more loathsome, more pernicious or more damaging to the Kingdom. His character was capable of any baseness, and his eloquence was equal to his character. Great was his facility for pretence or dissimulation at will. He was, in addition, much given to debauchery, for ever seeking to bring noble matrons and virgins to his bed; the more unstained their virtue, the more ardently did he strive to possess them.

Hugo Falcandus

William
had slipped back into his old ways. It might have been expected that his crushing defeat of the Byzantines, and the three ensuing years of intense diplomatic activity during which his star rose higher and higher in the European firmament, would have given him a taste for politics, or at least have tempted him to prove himself as gifted a statesman as he had a general. They did neither. No sooner had he returned to Sicily in July
11
5 6 and passed sentence on those who had taken up arms against him than he once more abandoned himself to a life of pleasure. The old attractions of palace and park, of bower and bedchamber, were too strong. For the next six years he never once visited the mainland, seldom even setting foot outside Palermo and its immediate neighbourhood. The handling of state affairs, both domestic and foreign, he placed as before in the capable hands of Maio of Bari.

Maio's power was now at its zenith. Not only was this Apulian merchant's son the effective ruler of the Kingdom; he was rapidly becoming, thanks to the success of his foreign policies, one of the most influential statesmen in Europe.
¹
The baronial party, both on the mainland and in Sicily, resented him more than ever. More than ever they found themselves outcasts, obliged to stand impotently by while the government of the Kingdom became, as they saw it, the exclusive preserve of two separate groups, the one detested, the other despised: first, the Emir's family and henchmen, men like Stephen and Simon, the Master Captains in Apulia; like Archbishop Hugh of Palermo, or like the young Salernitan notary Matthew of Ajello who had drafted the Treaty of Benevento and was obviously being groomed by Maio as his eventual successor; second, the palace eunuchs—almost all of them, like that Peter who had cut such a sorry figure against the Almohad fleet, being baptised Saracens and thus politically as well as physically suspect in the eyes of their enemies.

It was small wonder, in such conditions, that the air of Palermo was heavy with rumours. Men whispered that the Emir was scheming to seize the crown for himself—indeed that he had already appropriated several items of the regalia, which he had been showing off to his friends. He had had no difficulty in laying his hands on such treasures; they were passed to him by the Queen, whose infatuation for him was well known. Others made even more scandalous assertions—that he had revived his plans to do away with the King, and that he had already bribed the Pope, through the agency of Matthew of Ajello, to give him his blessing as William's successor.

Where rumours were so rife, conspiracies were bound to follow.

In Palermo, Maio's ubiquitous agents and informers were usually able to nip them in the bud; but the mainland provided would-be plotters with opportunities in plenty and here, some time towards the end of
11
59,
a group of dissatisfied nobles evolved a scheme to

¹
He was also beginning to build the church of S. Cataldo, immediately west of the Martorana (Plate 1
3).
With its three high cupolas and honeycomb windows, this church looks, from the outside, as Islamic as S. Giovanni degli Eremiti. Like S. Giovanni, too, its interior is now stripped of all decoration—though the floor and the altar are both original and quietly remarkable in their way (Plate 14). S. Cataldo is, incidentally—with the possible exception of the lovely little SS. Trinita di Delia just outside Castelvetrano—the last Norman Sicilian church in which the Arabic influence is apparent (Plate 15). Henceforth every new Latin church to be built also looked like one.