{"id":16001,"date":"2022-07-12T07:46:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T05:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=211455"},"modified":"2022-07-12T08:03:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T06:03:11","slug":"normans-in-africa-the-12th-century-attempt-to-forge-a-north-african-norman-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/normans-in-africa-the-12th-century-attempt-to-forge-a-north-african-norman-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Normans in Africa: the 12th-century attempt to forge a north-African Norman kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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One day in the early 1070s, the Norman count Roger I of Sicily was hosting a meeting of his advisers when something they said irked him. \u201cRoger lifted his thigh and made a great fart,\u201d reported the Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athi\u0304r, \u201csaying: \u2018By my faith, here is far better counsel than you have given\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Normans are best known for their conquests. So it may come as a surprise to learn that Roger\u2019s flatulence signalled his contempt for advice that he should join a planned invasion \u2013 of Africa, the great continent across the Mediterranean to the south.<\/p>\n

In the years preceding this incident, Roger\u2019s influence along the seaboards of southern Europe and north Africa had been growing steadily. Indeed, the Normans represented a rising power on both sides of the Mediterranean and, by the second half of the 11th century, their neighbours were beginning to sit up and take notice.<\/p>\n

It was in this context that messengers from Genoa and Pisa had arrived at Roger\u2019s court, inviting him to join them in a military expedition against Mahdia, the capital of the Zirid rulers of north Africa (now on Tunisia\u2019s east coast). The two Italian city-states were looking to muscle in on the lucrative trade between the western and eastern Mediterranean, much of which passed along the north African coast, and they rated their chances of success far higher with the Normans at their side.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
The rocky shore of the Tunisian city of Mahdia \u2013 conquered by the Normans in 1148. (Image by Dreamstime)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Roger\u2019s advisers were keen to join the expedition but, as we know from Ibn al-Athi\u0304r, the count was sceptical. As Roger noted, if the expedition against Mahdia were to succeed, then the profits would go mostly to Pisa and Genoa. But if it failed, it was the Normans who would face the consequences. Roger had recently concluded a peace with Tami\u0304m ibn al-Mu\u2018izz, the Zirid ruler. He did not want to risk this truce for a speculative venture.<\/p>\n

So the count watched from the sidelines as the attack on Mahdia went ahead in 1074 \u2013 but the Normans would not sit on their hands for long.\u00a0The following century, they did go on the offensive in north Africa and \u2013 thanks to their own skill and a divided enemy \u2013 established a kingdom there.<\/p>\n

That Norman outpost in the heart of Muslim north Africa \u2013 the region then known as Ifri\u0304qya \u2013 is among the least studied yet most fascinating episodes of their many conquests throughout the Middle Ages<\/a>. It\u2019s a tale far less famous than those of their campaigns across southern Italy and, of course, England. Yet it\u2019s a story that richly deserves to be told.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conquest and settlement<\/h3>\n

Norman mercenaries had been plying their trade in southern Italy since the early years of the 11th century. And, starting in the 1040s\u2013 two decades before that other celebrated Norman conqueror, William of Normandy<\/a>, faced Harold II at the battle of Hastings<\/a> \u2013 they began a systematic process of conquest and settlement. The first places to fall were the provinces of Calabria and Apulia (Puglia) on the mainland. But by the time of the Mahdia campaign in 1074, much of Sicily (including the capital, Palermo) was in Norman hands.<\/p>\n

Once the Normans had secured southern Italy, they began looking farther afield. In the 1080s, Robert Guiscard \u2013 Roger\u2019s elder brother (and nominal superior) \u2013 led a set of daring attacks on the Byzantine-ruled Balkans and Greece. And in 1091, Roger himself secured the strategically significant island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean. The island was soon lost, but that would prove a temporary setback.<\/p>\n

In 1105, Roger\u2019s son, successor and namesake, Roger II, became Count of Sicily. Under his stewardship, Norman power around the Mediterranean surged to new heights. He retook Malta in 1127 and, that same year, secured control of Calabria and Apulia, succeeding his relative Duke William II. Until that point, Roger had held Sicily under William\u2019s oversight; now he ruled in his own right. Three years later, Roger declared himself king of Sicily.<\/p>\n