Diplomatica Siciliana

Abstract

The study of Muslim rule and its vestiges in medieval Sicily has a long and distinguished pedigree. In the nineteenth century the impetus was both scholarly and political, to which the monumental works of Amari and De Mas Latrie bear eloquent witness. In more recent times the motive has been simple and straightforward curiosity about a remarkable instance of cultural symbiosis. The parameters are now either linguistic or historical or both, and the gain is substantial. With the reprint exactly a century after its original publication in Palermo of Salvatore Cusa's I Diplomi greci ed Arabi di Sicilia one might be permitted to suppose that a reassessment of the earlier scholarship is underway. But the commemoration is itself curiously unhelpful: we are offered a typographically reduced replica of the original innocent of comment save for two pages of very general observations by Albrecht Noth on the significance of Cusa's compilation for students of Islamic history. Neither reference to subsequent work nor indication of a present project is included, a circumstance that only with generosity could be regarded as tantalizing.