Sicily: Culture, Conquest, and multiculturalism

A few weeks ago I went to see the British Museum exhibition Sicily: Culture and Conquest. My interest in Sicily stems from two things: Diodorus Siculus, a first-century BCE Greek historian from Agyrium in Sicily, has been the main object of my research for many years (he is the primary classical source on Sardanapalus). Secondly, I am a great admirer of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, and in the third season of that show Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter spend several weeks in Palermo, allowing the show to apply its magnificent cinematographic gaze to the Cappella Palatina, and giving me an incurable longing to visit. An exhibition focusing specifically on Greek and Norman Sicily was thus a curiously fortunate combination of all the things I most wanted to see.

I was not disappointed; the exhibition was full of historically interesting artefacts as well as beautiful art, and accompanied by large-scale photographs of Sicilian scenery, which did nothing to abate my yearning to travel. It was also thoughtfully curated, and the companion book provided further information on Sicilian history and on what seems to be the focus of the exhibition: multiculturalism. Although Sicily has been colonised by numerous foreign invaders (Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs), the most significant cultural productions seem to have occurred during the Greek (734-241 BCE) and Norman (1061-1266 CE) periods. These were also times when the colonisers chose to incorporate previous local traditions and practices into their own, and brought about a culturally hybrid society.

One remarkable artefact was the tombstone of a woman named Anna, dating to from 1148 and including eulogies in four languages: Judeo-Arabic, Latin, Greek and Arabic. These texts were not simply translations of each other; rather they took the trouble to record the year of her death in the respective cultural traditions – 1148 in Latin, 544 in Arabic, 6657 in Greek (from the creation of the world in 5508 BCE) and 4909 in Judeo-Arabic (from the creation of the world in 3761 BCE). This tells us something about the cultural context in which Anna lived: that she and her family were probably multi-lingual and multi-religious, and that both of these things were something they wanted to highlight, and to share with their community. Theirs was, it suggests, a community in which multiculturalism was a part of social life.

One other thing which gave me great delight at the exhibition was the Sicilian Arabic poetry peppering the exhibition walls, written by local poets after the Norman conquest, and discussing the complicated notions of home after exile. Thus writes Ibn Hamdis, born in Syracuse in 1056 CE, who left the island after the conquest:

Oh my Sicily. In memory

A desperate longing for you and

For the follies of my youth returns. Again I see

The lost happiness and the splendid friends,

Oh Paradise from which I was expelled!

What is the point of recalling your splendour?

It is perhaps a subtle theme throughout the exhibition, but worth keeping in mind when we engage with cultural history, and culturally charged artefacts; to what extent is culture connected to nationalities and nationalisms? Does cultural engagement necessarily vary between ownership and appropriation, or is there a wider range of possibilities – interaction without laying claims?