CSAMES Talk: “Muslim Sicily, Real and Imagined,” Bill Granara

William Granara is Research Professor of Arabic at Harvard University. His research covers Arabic and Islamic literature and culture in the Mediterranean in both its medieval and modern periods, with a primary focus on Muslim Sicily.

He is the author of two monographs: Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World (2019) and Ibn Hamdis the Sicilian: Eulogist for a Falling Homeland (2021).This talk introduces medieval Sicily in its Muslim period, beginning with the 9th century conquest and ending with dissolution in the early decades of the 13th century.

It focuses on how this extraordinary period in history was experienced, archived, imagined, and remembered by its native poets and writers, as well as the travelers who visited the island, during its political and cultural apogee, and the later years under the domination of the Norman kings.