Mediterranean Southwest Europe (964 – 1107 CE): Taifa Spain, Norman Sicily, and the Italian Communes

Geographic and Environmental Context

Mediterranean Southwest Europe includes Portugal’s Algarve and Alentejo; Spain’s Extremadura, Andalusia, Murcia, Valencia, Castile/La Mancha, southeastern Castile and León, Madrid, southeastern Rioja, southeastern Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands; Andorra; all of Italy including Venice, Sicily, and Sardinia; and Malta.

• Anchors: the Andalusian taifas (Seville, Zaragoza, Valencia), the Ebro corridor and Catalan march, Lisbon/Algarve–Alentejo as frontier, the Castile/La Mancha–Madrid plateau edge, the Balearics under Muslim control, Venice and the Adriatic, Pisa/Genoa on the Ligurian coast, Apulia–Naples, and Sicily–Malta shifting to Norman hands, with Sardinia under Pisan–Genoese influence.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Warm, stable conditions continued; vine and olive belts from Andalusia to Tuscany prospered.

Societies and Political Developments

• Al-Andalus fragmented into taifas (after 1031); Seville, Valencia, Zaragoza competed until Almoravid intervention (1086).

• León–Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Catalonia advanced the Reconquista; Toledo fell to Alfonso VI (1085).

• Norman conquest of Sicily (1061–1091) created a tri-lingual kingdom (Latin–Greek–Arabic); Malta joined the Norman sphere.

• Italy: Venice, Genoa, Pisa matured as communes; Venice led Adriatic commerce and crusade logistics on the eve of 1096.

• Sardinia: Pisa and Genoa contested the judicati.

Economy and Trade

• Taifa luxury crafts (textiles, carved stucco), Valencian irrigation; Venetian, Genoese, Pisan fleets dominated Levant and western Med routes; Sicilian sugar/citrus expanded under Norman irrigation.

Subsistence and Technology

• Andalusi waterworks; Italian shipyards (lateen rigs, standardized hulls); urban notarial systems in Venice and Genoa.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Ebro–Tagus–Guadalquivir trunks; Pyrenean passes (Somport) linking Aragon–Catalonia to Andorra; Adriatic lanes radiating from Venice; Tyrrhenian circuits Sardinia–Sicily–Naples–Rome.

Belief and Symbolism

• Islamic, Mozarabic, and Latin cultures intertwined in Iberia; Norman Sicily’s royal chapel (Palatine prototypes) symbolized syncretism; crusading ethos rose in Italian ports.

Long-Term Significance

By 1107, Venice and sister communes dominated sea-lanes; Norman Sicily was a Mediterranean hinge; Iberian monarchies pressed south against taifas and Almoravids.

Southwest Europe (964 – 1107 CE): Taifa Courts, Norman Kings, and the Pilgrim Atlantic

Geographic and Environmental Context

Southwest Europe extended from the Atlantic coasts of Portugal and northern Spain to the Mediterranean heartlands of al-Andalus, Italy, and the islands of the western sea.
It encompassed the Andalusian taifas, the Castilian and Leonese uplands, the Ebro corridor and Catalan march, the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, and the Italian peninsula from Venice to Apulia.
Mountain chains—the Cantabrian range, Sierra Morena, and Apennines—divided temperate valleys and coastal plains.
Key nodes included Seville, Toledo, Valencia, Lisbon, León, Santiago de Compostela, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Palermo, and Naples, each connected by maritime and overland arteries binding the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Adriatic.

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Climate and Environmental Shifts

The Medieval Warm Period (c. 950–1250) sustained stable warmth and generous rainfall.

• Vineyards and olive groves thrived from Andalusia to Tuscany.

• Andalusian irrigation and Italian terraces increased yields, supporting large urban populations.

• In Atlantic Iberia, fertile valleys of the Minho, Douro, and Tagus produced wheat, vines, and chestnuts.

• Seasonal winds—the monsoon-like summer westerlies and Mediterranean sea breezes—facilitated shipping from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Levant.

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Societies and Political Developments

Al-Andalus and the Christian Frontier

After the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate (1031), al-Andalus fragmented into taifa kingdoms—Seville, Zaragoza, Valencia, and Granada—each vying for tribute and prestige.
These cities flourished as centers of learning, architecture, and luxury production, until threatened by the northern Christian monarchies.
In 1086, the Almoravids, invited from North Africa, restored unity briefly, defeating Castile at Sagrajas.
To the north, León, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Catalonia advanced the Reconquista, seizing Toledo (1085) and pressing southward.
Lisbon, under the taifa of Badajoz, remained a major Muslim entrepôt linking the Atlantic and the caliphal interior.

The Leónese and Atlantic Heartlands

In the west, the Kingdom of León dominated the 10th–11th centuries.

• Under Ordoño III, Ferdinand I, and Alfonso VI, León extended from Galicia to the Tagus.

• Castile, born as a marcher county, evolved into a frontier kingdom famed for its castles and independent spirit.

• Galicia, integrated under León, revolved around Santiago de Compostela, where the pilgrimage cult of St. James transformed the region into a magnet for European devotion.

• In Portugal, the marches of Portucale and Coimbra revived after 1064, with Porto and Braga emerging as Atlantic trade ports.

Italy and the Central Mediterranean

While Iberia was a land of religious frontier, Italy was a sea of republics.

• In the north, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa matured into maritime communes, pioneering republican institutions, notarial law, and crusade logistics.

• In the south, Normans, led by Robert Guiscard and Roger I, conquered Sicily (1061–1091) and Malta, creating a tri-lingual kingdom blending Latin, Greek, and Arabic.

• Sardinia’s judicati balanced Pisan and Genoese influence, while Naples and Apulia formed the Norman–papal frontier.

• Venice, ruling the Adriatic, became the central broker between Byzantine, Levantine, and western markets.

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Economy and Trade

Southwest Europe’s prosperity rested on an intricate web of agriculture, craftsmanship, and maritime exchange.

• Andalusian taifas exported textiles, ceramics, sugar, citrus, and leather, while importing Christian slaves, timber, and metals.

• León and Castile traded grain, wine, wool, and hides through Burgos, Porto, and Santiago’s ports.

• Lisbon re-exported Andalusi goods northward to Aquitaine and Brittany.

• Venice, Genoa, and Pisa dominated shipping lanes to the Levant and Egypt, pioneering lateen-rigged galleysand merchant convoys.

• Sicilian plantations under the Normans expanded sugar and citrus exports.

• Italian banking and credit instruments emerged in urban markets by the century’s end.
  Together, these routes transformed the western Mediterranean and Atlantic into a continuous commercial zone.

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Subsistence and Technology

• Andalusian irrigation systems (qanāts, norias, and acequias) sustained dense farming and gardens.

• Romanesque architecture and Moorish stucco carving flourished side by side across Iberia.

• Italian shipyards standardized hulls and rigging; urban notaries codified contracts and loans.

• Water-mills and terraced vineyards multiplied in Galicia, León, and northern Portugal, improving rural productivity.

• Artisanal specialization in glass, metalwork, and ceramics distinguished Córdoba, Valencia, Venice, and Amalfi.

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Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Ebro–Tagus–Guadalquivir trunks tied the interior taifas to Mediterranean ports.

• Camino de Santiago, the great pilgrim road, linked Aquitaine and Navarre to Compostela, stimulating monasteries, inns, and markets.

• Pyrenean passes (Somport, Roncesvalles) joined Aragon and Catalonia to France and Andorra.

• Adriatic sea-lanes radiated from Venice; Tyrrhenian circuits connected Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Rome.

• Atlantic sea routes bound Porto, Braga, and Lisbon to Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Brittany, forming a “pilgrim sea” complementing the overland Camino.

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Belief and Symbolism

Religious diversity defined the region’s identity.

• Iberia blended Islamic, Mozarabic, and Latin traditions—mosques and Romanesque churches coexisted in frontier towns.

• Cluniac reform reached León, Castile, and Catalonia, renewing monastic discipline and pilgrimage infrastructure.

• Santiago de Compostela became Europe’s third great shrine, after Rome and Jerusalem, symbolizing Christendom’s advance into the western frontier.

• In Norman Sicily, Arabic artisans, Greek clerics, and Latin knights cooperated under royal patronage; the Palatine Chapel embodied this syncretic trilingual culture.

• Venetian crusading ideology merged faith and commerce, anticipating the maritime crusades of the 12th century.

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Adaptation and Resilience

• Frontier colonization repopulated Duero and Tagus valleys with mixed Mozarabic, Basque, and Frankish settlers.

• Pilgrimage economies stabilized infrastructure through shared spiritual and material investment.

• Norman administration in Sicily integrated Arabic fiscal systems and Greek bureaucracy with Latin law.

• Italian communes institutionalized civic cooperation, fortifying autonomy amid imperial–papal conflict.

• Maritime republics diversified routes, ensuring continuity of trade even through warfare or piracy.

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Long-Term Significance

By 1107 CE, Southwest Europe had become one of the most dynamic crossroads of the medieval world:

• Venice, Genoa, and Pisa commanded the seas, laying foundations for Europe’s commercial expansion.

• Norman Sicily stood as a Mediterranean hinge, fusing Christian, Muslim, and Byzantine traditions.

• Taifa Spain dazzled with artistry even as it faced Almoravid unification.

• León, Castile, and Portugal pushed southward in a Reconquista that paralleled pilgrimage prosperity and frontier growth.

• The Camino de Santiago and pilgrim Atlantic bound Christendom together in faith and movement, while Islamic, Christian, and Jewish exchanges enriched its culture.

This was an age of urban rebirth, seaborne power, and spiritual mobility—a world where ports, palaces, and pilgrim roads alike radiated the vitality of a newly interconnected Southwest Europe.

North Africa (964 – 1107 CE): Fatimid Zenith, Zirids, and Almoravid Expansion

Geographic and Environmental Context

North Africa includes the Maghreb littoral and inland from modern Morocco through Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya (west of Egypt and the Nile). It also includes Western Sahara.

• Anchors: the Atlas Mountains, Tell coastlands, Sahara fringes, and Ifriqiya (Tunisia–eastern Algeria–western Libya).

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Continued warm conditions, with Mediterranean agriculture thriving.

• Sahara margins remained crucial to caravan networks.

Societies and Political Developments

• Fatimids moved capital from Mahdia to Cairo (969), leaving Ifriqiya to Zirid vassals (972).

• Zirids later defied Fatimids, reasserting Sunni orthodoxy (1040s).

• Fatimids retaliated by supporting Hilalian Bedouin invasions (1050s), devastating agriculture in Tunisia.

• Almoravids (1040s–1140s), Sanhaja Berbers, founded Marrakesh and expanded across Morocco, western Algeria, and into al-Andalus.

Economy and Trade

• Agriculture: olives, wheat, and irrigation in Morocco and coastal Algeria; decline in Tunisia post-Hilalian invasion.

• Trans-Saharan trade: Almoravids secured gold and slave routes from Ghana to Morocco.

• Mediterranean trade: Sicily (Kalbids under Fatimids) integrated into Ifriqiya networks.

Belief and Symbolism

• Fatimid Ismailism flourished in Egypt but weakened in Maghreb.

• Sunni revival under Zirids and Almoravids; Maliki law entrenched.

• Islamic scholarship: Marrakesh and Kairouan thrived.

Long-Term Significance

By 1107, the Maghreb was dominated by Almoravids in the west and Zirids in the east, with Hilalian Bedouin reshaping demographics and ecology in central North Africa.

The Fatimids pose a threat to Morocco for many years, but their deepest ambition is to rule the East, the Mashriq, which includes Egypt and Muslim lands beyond.

By 969, they have conquered Egypt and in 972, the Fatimid ruler Al Muizz establishes the new city of Cairo as his capital.

The Fatimids leave the rule of Ifriqiya and most of Algeria to the Zirids (972–1148).

This Berber dynasty, which had founded the towns of Miliana, Médéa, and Algiers and centers significant local power in Algeria for the first time, turns over its domain west of Ifriqiya to the Banu Hammad branch of its family.

The Almoravid movement develops early in the eleventh century among the Sanhaja confederation, whose control of trans-Saharan trade routes is under pressure from the Zenata Berbers in the north and the state of Ghana in the south.

Yahya Ibn Ibrahim, a leader of the Godala tribe of the Sanhaja confederation, decides to raise the level of Islamic knowledge and practice among his people.

To accomplish this, on his return from the hajj (Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) in 1048–1049, he brings with him Abdallah Ibn Yasin, a Moroccan scholar.

In the early years of the movement, the scholar is concerned only with imposing moral discipline and a strict adherence to Islamic principles among his followers.

Abd Allah ibn Yasin also becomes known as one of the marabouts, or holy persons (from al murabitun, "those who have made a religious retreat").

The Almoravid movement shifts from promoting religious reform to engaging in military conquest after 1054 and is led by Lamtuna leaders: first Yahya, then his brother Abu Bakr, then his cousin Yusuf ibn Tashfin.

With Marrakech as their capital, the Almoravids conquer Morocco, the Maghreb as far east as Algiers, and Spain up to the Ebro River by 1106.

The Hammadids will rule from 1011 to 1151, during which time Bejaïa becomes the most important port in North Africa.

This period is marked by constant conflict, political instability, and economic decline.

The Hammadids, by rejecting the Ismaili doctrine for Sunni orthodoxy and renouncing submission to the Fatimids, initiate chronic conflict with the Zirids.

Two great Berber confederations—the Sanhaja and the Zenata—engage in an epic struggle.

The fiercely brave, camelborne nomads of the western desert and steppe as well as the sedentary farmers of the Kabylie to the east swear allegiance to the Sanhaja.

Their traditional enemies, the Zenata, are tough, resourceful horsemen from the cold plateau of the northern interior of Morocco and the western Tell in Algeria.

In addition, raiders from Genoa, Pisa, and Norman Sicily attack ports and disrupt coastal trade.

Trans-Saharan trade shifts to Fatimid Egypt and to routes in the west leading to Spanish markets.

The countryside is being overtaxed by growing cities.

The Fatimid caliph in Cairo reacts by inviting the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym, Bedouin tribes from Arabia known collectively as the Hilalians, to migrate to the Maghreb and punish his rebellious vassals, the Zirids.

The Arab nomads spread across the region, in the words of the historian Ibn Khaldun, like a "swarm of lo-custs," impoverishing it, destroying towns, and dramatically altering the face and culture of the countryside.

The Hilalian impact on Cyrenaica and Tripolitania is devastating in both economic and demographic terms.

Tripoli is sacked, and what little remains of urban life in once-great cities like Cyrene is snuffed out, leaving only ruins.

Over a long period of time, Arabs displace Berbers (many of whom joined the Hilalians) from their traditional lands and convert farmland to pasturage.

Land is neglected, and the steppe is allowed to intrude into the coastal plain.

The number of Hilalians who moved westward out of Egypt has been estimated as high as two hundred thousand families.

The Banu Sulaym seem to have stopped in Libya, while the Banu Hilal continue across the Maghreb until they reach the Atlantic coast of Morocco and complete the Arabization of the region, imposing their social organization, values, and language on it.

The process is particularly thorough in Cyrenaica, which is said to be more Arab than any place in the Arab world except for the interior of Arabia.

The slow but steady economic revival of Europe creates a demand for goods from the East for which Fatimid ports in North Africa and Sicily are ideal distribution centers.

Tripoli thrives on the trade in slaves and gold brought from the Sudan and on the sale of wool, leather, and salt shipped from its docks to Italy in exchange for wood and iron goods.

For many years the Fatimids threaten Morocco with invasion, but they eventually turn their armies eastward, where in the name of religion the Berbers take their revenge on the Arabs.

By 969 the Fatimids have completed the conquest of Egypt and moved their capital to the new city that they founded at Cairo, where they have established a Shia caliphate to rival that of the Sunni caliph at Baghdad.

They leave the Maghreb to their Berber vassals, the Zirids, but the Shia regime has already begun to crumble in Tripolitania as factions struggle indecisively for regional supremacy.

The Zirids neglect the economy, except to pillage it for their personal gain.

Agricultural production declines, and farmers and herdsmen became brigands.

Shifting patterns of trade gradually depress the once-thriving commerce of the towns.

In an effort to hold the support of the urban Arabs, in 1049 the Zirid amir defiantly rejects the Shia creed, breaks with the Fatimids, and initiates a Berber return to Sunni orthodoxy.

The Norman rulers of southern Italy take advantage of the Zirids' distress in North Africa to invade Sicily in 1060 and bring it back under Christian control.

By 1150 the Normans hold a string of ports and fortresses along the coast between Tunis and Tripoli, but their interests in North Africa are commercial rather than political, and no effort is made to extend the conquest inland.

Jawhar had ruled Egypt until 972 as viceroy, when he had fallen from favor.

Just to the north of the city of al-Fustat, the old administrative center of Muslim Egypt, the Fatimids have built the new city of Cairo, and in it a new cathedral mosque and seminary, called al-Azhar, after Fatimah az-Zahra' (the Resplendent), the ancestress of the dynasty.

Cairo has been built as the royal enclosure for the Fatimid caliphs, while the actual economic and administrative capital remains in nearby Fustat. (After Fustat’s destruction in 1168/1169 to prevent its capture by the Crusaders, the administrative capital of Egypt will move to Cairo, where it has remained ever since. Now the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world, it is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.)

Al-Mu'izz enters Cairo in 972 or 973, transferring the center of Fatimid power to Egypt.