Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/416

388 the Caliph Mahdī to be cruelly executed, and Sicily became once more a province of the Fāṭimite Empire (917).

Thus strengthened the Fāṭimites again commenced their piratical trips from Africa and Sicily, and the Byzantines purchased peace for their coasts for some time by a treaty with Mahdī. The latter recouped himself for this in the north, by plundering the district of Genoa and the town itself in 984 and 935, at the same time casually honouring Corsica and Sardinia with a visit.

These years were not happy ones for Sicily; one unscrupulous governor drove the Islāmic upper classes to revolt, whilst another subjected them in an unprecedentedly bloody struggle. Thereafter a more favoured time began under the rule of the Arab Ḥasan ibn Ali, who had been entrusted with the governorship by the second Fāṭimite in 948. Ḥasan belonged to a family called Banū abi-l-Husain, and the Fāṭimite to the Kalb; he and his successors and relatives who ruled after him are therefore called the Kalbites, a brilliant dynasty, under whom all the gifts of civilisation began to collect and take shape, which gave later a distinctive character to the Norman culture, and even to that of Frederick II.

The energetic Amīr repressed the particularism which militated against successful development, and thus created the foundations of a well-regulated and more or less independent State. The Fāṭimites were shrewd enough to restrict their choice to members of the race of Banū abi-l-Ḥusain, whenever a new governor was required, without however permitting too much private power to arise by so doing. Closely related members of the family were always employed by the Fāṭimites in Egypt, thus securing themselves against any efforts at independence on the part of the Amīr for the time being. But apart from this the governor had complete freedom, especially since the Fāṭimites had removed their capital to Egypt. In this way the Amīr of Sicily acted as a necessary counterpoise to the Amīr of Ḳairawān. In the foreign policy of the Fāṭimites moreover Sicily played in the long run a more and more important part, especially since the Fāṭimites had become the leading Muslim power in the eastern Mediterranean territory and were engaged in constant struggles with the Byzantines for supremacy. This however can only for the present be briefly touched upon.

Ḥasan ibn Ali reigned until 965. During his rule renewed fights took place in Calabria and Apulia, in fact the Byzantines even ventured on a landing in Sicily, but in the year 965 the Greek fleet was utterly destroyed off Messina. But shortly after, when the conquest of Egypt was impending, the Fāṭimites concluded terms of peace with Byzantium and thus Italy also obtained a period of rest from the Saracens, and an alliance was even made with them temporarily when the movements of the Emperor Otto II began in Lower Italy. In 982 however Otto was seriously defeated by the Saracens at Stilo in the Bay of Taranto.