The Emirate of Sicily was an emirate on the island of Sicily which existed from 831 to 1091. Its capital was Palermo. Muslim Moors, who first invaded in 652, seized control of the entire island from the Byzantine Empire in a prolonged series of conflicts from 827 to 902. An Arab-Byzantine culture developed, producing a multiconfessional and multilingual state. The Emirate was conquered by Christian Norman mercenaries under Roger I of Sicily, who founded the County of Sicily in 1071. The last Muslim city in the island, Noto, was conquered in 1091. In 826 Euphemius, the commander of the Byzantine fleet of Sicily, forced a nun to marry him. Emperor Michael II caught wind of the matter and ordered that General Constantine end the marriage and cut off Euphemius' nose. Euphemius rose up, killed Constantine and then occupied Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and driven out to North Africa. He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia in return for a place as a general and safety; a Muslim army was sent. The latter agreed to conquer Sicily, promising to give it to Euphemius in exchange for a yearly tribute, and entrusted its conquest to the 70-year-old qadi Asad ibn al-Furat. The Muslim force counted 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 100 ships, reinforced by Euphemius' ships and, after the landing at Mazara del Vallo. A first battle against the loyal Byzantine troops occurred on July 15, 827, near Mazara, resulting in an Aghlabid victory. The conquest was a see-saw affair; with considerable resistance and many internal struggles, it took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be conquered. Syracuse held out for a long time but fell in 878, Taormina fell in 902, and the last Byzantine outpost was taken in 965. Throughout this reign, continued revolts by Byzantine Sicilians occurred, especially in the east, and part of the lands were even re-occupied before being quashed. The local population conquered by the Muslims were Greek speaking Orthodox Christians mainly in the eastern half of the island. The conquered population could avoid subservient status by converting to Islam. Whether by honest religious conviction or compulsion large numbers of native Sicilians converted to Islam. However, even after 100 years of Islamic rule, numerous Greek speaking Christian communities prospered, especially in north-eastern Sicily, as dhimmis. Throughout the Islamic epoch of Sicilian history, a significant Greek-speaking population remained on the island and continued to use the Greek language.
In 1038, Byzantine forces began a reconquest of Sicily under the Greek general George Maniakes. This invasion relied on a number of Norse mercenaries, the Varangians, including the future king of Norway Harald Hardrada, as well as on several contingents of Normans. Although Maniakes' death in a Byzantine civil war in 1043 cut the invasion short, the Normans followed up on the advances made by the Byzantines and completed the conquest of the island from the Saracens. Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060 after taking Apulia and Calabria, Roger I occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. The Zirids of North Africa sent a support force, led by Ali and Ayyub ibn Tamin. However, Sicilians and Africans were defeated in 1063, in the Battle of Cerami. The sizeable Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims. The island was split politically between three Arab emirs, and the sizable Byzantine Christian population rebelled against the ruling Muslims. In 1068, Roger de Hauteville and his men defeated again the Muslims forces commanded by Ayu ibn Tamim in Misilmeri. The Africans left Sicily in disarray after the defeat and Catania fell to the Normans in 1071, followed, after one year of siege, by Palermo in 1072. Trapani capitulated the same year. The loss of the main port cities dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. In 1091, Butera and Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians with ease. After the conquest of Sicily, the Normans removed the local emir, Yusuf Ibn Abdallah from power, but did so by respecting Arab customs. "The transformation of Sicily into a Christian island", remarks Abulafia, "was also, paradoxically, the work of those whose culture was under threat". Despite the presence of an Arab-speaking Christian population, it was Greek churchmen who attracted Muslim peasants to receive baptism and even adopt Greek Christian names; in several instances, Christian serfs with Greek names listed in the Monreale registers had living Muslim parents. Under Norman rule, Palermo confirmed its role as one of the great capitals of Europe and the Mediterranean. Numerous Classical Greek works, long lost to the Latin speaking West, were translated from Byzantine Greek manuscripts found in Sicily directly into Latin. For the following two hundred years, Sicily under Norman rule became a model which was widely admired throughout Europe. At the end of the 12th century, the population of Norman Sicily is estimated to have been up to one-third Byzantine Greek speaking, with the remainder speaking Latin dialects brought from mainland Italy, Norman and Sicilian Arabic. During a raid on the Byzantine Empire, Roger II's admiral George of Antioch had transported the silk weavers from Thebes, Greece, where they had formed a part of the, until then, closely guarded monopoly that was the Byzantine silk industry. The Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio built in 1143 by Roger II's "emir of emirs" George of Antioch was originally consecrated as a Greek Orthodox church, according to its Greek-Arab bilingual foundation charter, and was built in the Byzantine Greek cross style with some Arab influences. Arabic and Greek art and science continued to be influential in Sicily during the two centuries following the Norman conquest.
The Nebrodi is a mountain range that runs along the north east of Sicily. Together with the Madonie and the Peloritani, they form the Sicilian Apennines. The mountains run from the Peloritani on the eastern part of the island to the foothill of the Madonie mountains to the west, facing the Tyrrhenian Sea on the north. Mount Etna, from which it is separated by the rivers Alcantara and Simeto, forms the range's southern border. Several of the peaks are above 1500 meters with the highest being the Monte Soro (1,847 m) and the Serra del Re (1,754 m). The mountain range mostly made up of sandstone and clay rocks, but include also limestone landscapes. Towns that are situated in the mountains include Troina, Nicosia, Mistretta, and a number of other towns in the province of Messina. Much of the mountains are covered by thick forests of cork trees on the lowest slopes giving way to oak and then beech at the higher elevations. Yew trees occur in the beech forests. In many areas the upland forest has been cleared to make mountain pastures.
The Chronicle of Monemvasia is a medieval text of which four versions, all written in medieval Greek, are extant. The Chronicle, specifically the version from the Iberikon monastery, narrates the events that depict the Avaro-Slavic invasion of Greece, covering a period from 587 to 805 AD. As a result, many Greeks retreated to other areas: the inhabitants of Patras fled to Rhegium in Calabria, the Argives fled to the island of Orobe, the Corinthians fled to Aegina, and the Laconians fled to Sicily. The city of Monemvasia, specifically, was built at the time on the coast in an inaccessible region of the Peloponnese by groups that would later be known collectively as Tzakones.... A Byzantine military member of the Skleroi family, general Leon Skliros, helped make way for the native Greeks to reclaim their lands. Upon hearing these events, Emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802–811) contributed towards revitalizing the cities, rebuilding the churches, and Christianizing the barbarians. The barbarians that resisted they were slaughtered and enslaved. The land populated from Greek refugees.
Demenna or Dèmena is an ancient city, or perhaps a territorial whole, of central Sicily founded by the Byzantines. The name should derive from the Greek word Lacedemonion (inhabitants of Sparta) who had to leave the Peloponnese in the 7th century. The so-called "Chronicle of Monemvasia" gives ample information.
Because of its location it was an important city in the Byzantine era and later gave its name to Val Demone, one of the three administrative districts in which Sicily was divided from the Arab invasion to the Bourbon period. It was conquered by the Saracens around the year 885 and lost its importance. It was reduced to a core of a few houses with few inhabitants when in 920 San Luca di Demenna was born there. In the twelfth century, during the Norman domination it ceased to exist as an independent village. The survivors probably went to swell Turiano (the current Alcara li Fusi), which thus became a fairly important city for the merger of the territories and populations of three civic group. Some scholars identify Demenna with a center that was located north-east of Alcara Li Fusi, about three kilometers away, in the district that is still called Dèmina or Lémina, falling in the northern part of the former fiefdom San Giorgio. But a careful campaign of archaeological excavations corroborates and confirms the hypothesis according to which the ancient center corresponds to San Marco d'Alunzio. Certainly the Rocche del Crasto, located nearby, represented the main kastron of Demenna's chora. Demenna is the current San Marco d'Alunzio confirms the Arab geographer 'Al-Sharif' al-Idrisi in his 'Al kitab' al Rudjari, where he refers to the convent of San Filippo di Demenna, kanisat Sant Marku (The church of San Marco). Not far from Demenna stood the Basilian monastery of San Barbaro di Demenna, with an adjoining church. The monastery of San Barbaro di Demenna stood in the territory of Alcara li Fusi then Turiano, and precisely in the fiefdom San Giorgio, contrada Pascì. This Monastery of which the precise year of foundation is unknown, must have been most probably built towards the end of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth century, since it appears pre-existent to the Arab invasion. During the Saracen domination, the cenobio, already very flourishing, was reduced to a few monks and, even if forced to a gracious and difficult life, managed to overcome among many difficulties the difficulty of those calamitous times and to survive. After the Norman occupation, the monastery was reduced in very pitiful conditions and Count Roger in 1097 placed it under the abbey of San Filippo di Demenna, whose abbot Gregorio took care of the restoration works and in a few years it caused it to flourish again. In 1323 the monastery was ceded to a powerful lord, a certain Giovanni di Forlì, for two bodies, that is, about five quintals and a half, of wheat per year. So after more than 5 centuries of life, the old Basilian monastery of San Barbarian of Demenna.
The Val Dèmone sometimes referred to as Valdemone, Val di Demona or Val Demona was one of the valleys (or real domains beyond the Faro) in which Sicily was subdivided from the Muslim domination to the Bourbon period. The positions on the origin of Dimnsac-Deminæ were therefore different. According to the scholar and orientalist Michele Amari they would have to be searched in the Greek language, in particular he supposed that it could derive from the name with which the inhabitants of that territory were indicated, during the Arab conquest, that is "persisting" or "permanent" (perhaps in the faith or in the Empire), as it would derive from the present participle of the verb διαμένω (perpetual, lasting) of the Byzantine Greek, ie tondemenon, term that gave name to the vall and at the same time to a fortress later become city later called Demona or Demenna. Significant is the fact that a throat near Rometta, capital of Sikelia thema not yet dissolved, is called in a document of 963 "Dimnasc" (which pronounced would be dimnaʃ). Other hypotheses bring the etymology to the woodedness of the Nebrodi mountains, for which the territory would have been called Vallis Nemorum, or land of the woods; or they base the bases on a legend that would indicate Etna as inhabited by demons and would like the volcano as a point of access to the underworld, from which the territory would have been called Vallis Dæmonorum and finally there were those who put forward a presumed from Lacedemoni, the inhabitants of Sparta. Val Demone was the last part of the island to be conquered by the Arabs in the 10th century. Christian refugees from other parts of Sicily congregated there, and the region remained in contact with the Byzantine provinces in southern Italy. It was the base for the Byzantine attempt to reconquer Sicily under George Maniakes in the early 11th century. Consequently it was the least Arabicized and Islamicized part of Sicily, and was still mostly Greek-speaking at the time of the Norman conquest in the 11th century.
San Marco d'Alunzio is an Italian town of 1.996 inhabitants of the metropolitan city of Messina in Sicily. It is part of the circuit of the most beautiful villages in Italy. It is a municipality of the Nebrodi Park. Its foundation dates back to the 4th century BC and during the period of Greek domination it was a flourishing center called Alontion (Αλοντιον) and it fought its own currency. During the Punic Wars it was conquered by the Romans, who proclaimed it autonomous municipium, renaming it Aluntium and, in this period, the town experienced an artistic and economic development of which there is still evidence in archaeological monuments and in a vast epigraphic literature. It will also be cited by Pliny and Cicero himself in the famous trial against Verre, which seized the treasures of many Sicilian cities. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire (in the VI century AD), in a period of full decadence, a community of Byzantine refugees from Sparta came to Aluntium, who called it Demenna, and then by the Arabs who surrounded the town of walls and they made it the political administrative center of a vast area of Sicily called Val Demone. According to the historian Ali Ibn al-Athir, the Islamists attempted a first siege in 901, succeeding the following year in putting the inhabitants to flight. But the Byzantines succeeded in resuming it by forcing the Muslims in 910 to new battles until the final submission. The Normans, defeated the Arabs, made it their center of government and called it San Marco in honor of the evangelist and in memory of the first city conquered in Calabria. From the eleventh century it was the domain of Robert the Guiscard of the Altavilla, who chose it as a starting point and as a military garrison for the conquest of Sicily. In this period the monastery of the Benedictine nuns was built with the adjoining church of the Santissimo Salvatore. In 1061 Roberto il Guiscardo founded the first Norman castle of Sicily, dedicating it to San Marco, thus erasing the memory of Demenna, in order to eradicate the memory of the Arab era. In 1150 the geographer ibn Idris describes it as: "thriving locality, with a flourishing silk production and with an arsenal on the coast for the construction of canals with the woods taken from the rich forests of the hinterland."
Troina (Traina) is a town and comune (municipality) in the province of Enna, Sicily, southern Italy. It is located in the Nebrodi Park. Excavations have proved that the area of Troina was settled as early as the 7th millennium BC (a farm dating from that period, and a later necropolis). Of the Greek town (most likely known as Engyon) parts of the 4th-century-BC walls remain, while from the Roman age are baths. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire it was a Byzantine stronghold and during the Islamic period the religious and moral capital of the Greek and Christian orthodox part of Sicily; Roger I of Sicily had in its castle (which he captured in 1061) also a start base of his conquest of the island. Nicosia (Nicusìa, Lefkosia) is a village and comune of the province of Enna in Sicily, southern Italy. Nicosia, along with Troina are the northernmost towns in the province of Enna. The vicinity traditionally contained are salt mines and arable lands. The origin of Nicosia is uncertain. Engio, Erbita and Imachara are the three cities of antiquity with which historians have attempted to identify Nicosia with, but there is no evidence that the mentioned towns are in fact Nicosia. The present name of the town suggests Greek origins: it is believed to get its name from Saint Nicholas (Νίκου Οίκος). Another theory suggests it is a derivative of the Greek saying "City of Victory" (Νίκης Οίκος). The town is believed to stand on the site of the ancient Engynum. The modern town was founded by Byzantine colonists in the 7th century. It expanded under the Arab domination and later under that of the Normans, who settled numerous immigrants from Lombardy and Piedmont, called "Lombards", giving rise to the Gallo-Italic dialect still spoken in the town and surrounds. King William II made Nicosia a royal city. It played an important strategic role, favoured by its position halfway between Palermo and Messina. It often gave hospitality to important figures, including Emperor Charles V.
Πηγή : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicle_of_Monemvasia
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastero_di_San_Barbaro_di_Demenna
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marco_d%27Alunzio
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcara_li_Fusi
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demenna
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Demone
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Demone
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troina
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebrodi
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicosia,_Sicily
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman-Arab-Byzantine_culture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_language
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily
In 1038, Byzantine forces began a reconquest of Sicily under the Greek general George Maniakes. This invasion relied on a number of Norse mercenaries, the Varangians, including the future king of Norway Harald Hardrada, as well as on several contingents of Normans. Although Maniakes' death in a Byzantine civil war in 1043 cut the invasion short, the Normans followed up on the advances made by the Byzantines and completed the conquest of the island from the Saracens. Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, invaded Sicily in 1060 after taking Apulia and Calabria, Roger I occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights. The Zirids of North Africa sent a support force, led by Ali and Ayyub ibn Tamin. However, Sicilians and Africans were defeated in 1063, in the Battle of Cerami. The sizeable Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims. The island was split politically between three Arab emirs, and the sizable Byzantine Christian population rebelled against the ruling Muslims. In 1068, Roger de Hauteville and his men defeated again the Muslims forces commanded by Ayu ibn Tamim in Misilmeri. The Africans left Sicily in disarray after the defeat and Catania fell to the Normans in 1071, followed, after one year of siege, by Palermo in 1072. Trapani capitulated the same year. The loss of the main port cities dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. In 1091, Butera and Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians with ease. After the conquest of Sicily, the Normans removed the local emir, Yusuf Ibn Abdallah from power, but did so by respecting Arab customs. "The transformation of Sicily into a Christian island", remarks Abulafia, "was also, paradoxically, the work of those whose culture was under threat". Despite the presence of an Arab-speaking Christian population, it was Greek churchmen who attracted Muslim peasants to receive baptism and even adopt Greek Christian names; in several instances, Christian serfs with Greek names listed in the Monreale registers had living Muslim parents. Under Norman rule, Palermo confirmed its role as one of the great capitals of Europe and the Mediterranean. Numerous Classical Greek works, long lost to the Latin speaking West, were translated from Byzantine Greek manuscripts found in Sicily directly into Latin. For the following two hundred years, Sicily under Norman rule became a model which was widely admired throughout Europe. At the end of the 12th century, the population of Norman Sicily is estimated to have been up to one-third Byzantine Greek speaking, with the remainder speaking Latin dialects brought from mainland Italy, Norman and Sicilian Arabic. During a raid on the Byzantine Empire, Roger II's admiral George of Antioch had transported the silk weavers from Thebes, Greece, where they had formed a part of the, until then, closely guarded monopoly that was the Byzantine silk industry. The Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio built in 1143 by Roger II's "emir of emirs" George of Antioch was originally consecrated as a Greek Orthodox church, according to its Greek-Arab bilingual foundation charter, and was built in the Byzantine Greek cross style with some Arab influences. Arabic and Greek art and science continued to be influential in Sicily during the two centuries following the Norman conquest.
The Nebrodi is a mountain range that runs along the north east of Sicily. Together with the Madonie and the Peloritani, they form the Sicilian Apennines. The mountains run from the Peloritani on the eastern part of the island to the foothill of the Madonie mountains to the west, facing the Tyrrhenian Sea on the north. Mount Etna, from which it is separated by the rivers Alcantara and Simeto, forms the range's southern border. Several of the peaks are above 1500 meters with the highest being the Monte Soro (1,847 m) and the Serra del Re (1,754 m). The mountain range mostly made up of sandstone and clay rocks, but include also limestone landscapes. Towns that are situated in the mountains include Troina, Nicosia, Mistretta, and a number of other towns in the province of Messina. Much of the mountains are covered by thick forests of cork trees on the lowest slopes giving way to oak and then beech at the higher elevations. Yew trees occur in the beech forests. In many areas the upland forest has been cleared to make mountain pastures.
The Chronicle of Monemvasia is a medieval text of which four versions, all written in medieval Greek, are extant. The Chronicle, specifically the version from the Iberikon monastery, narrates the events that depict the Avaro-Slavic invasion of Greece, covering a period from 587 to 805 AD. As a result, many Greeks retreated to other areas: the inhabitants of Patras fled to Rhegium in Calabria, the Argives fled to the island of Orobe, the Corinthians fled to Aegina, and the Laconians fled to Sicily. The city of Monemvasia, specifically, was built at the time on the coast in an inaccessible region of the Peloponnese by groups that would later be known collectively as Tzakones.... A Byzantine military member of the Skleroi family, general Leon Skliros, helped make way for the native Greeks to reclaim their lands. Upon hearing these events, Emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802–811) contributed towards revitalizing the cities, rebuilding the churches, and Christianizing the barbarians. The barbarians that resisted they were slaughtered and enslaved. The land populated from Greek refugees.
Demenna or Dèmena is an ancient city, or perhaps a territorial whole, of central Sicily founded by the Byzantines. The name should derive from the Greek word Lacedemonion (inhabitants of Sparta) who had to leave the Peloponnese in the 7th century. The so-called "Chronicle of Monemvasia" gives ample information.
Because of its location it was an important city in the Byzantine era and later gave its name to Val Demone, one of the three administrative districts in which Sicily was divided from the Arab invasion to the Bourbon period. It was conquered by the Saracens around the year 885 and lost its importance. It was reduced to a core of a few houses with few inhabitants when in 920 San Luca di Demenna was born there. In the twelfth century, during the Norman domination it ceased to exist as an independent village. The survivors probably went to swell Turiano (the current Alcara li Fusi), which thus became a fairly important city for the merger of the territories and populations of three civic group. Some scholars identify Demenna with a center that was located north-east of Alcara Li Fusi, about three kilometers away, in the district that is still called Dèmina or Lémina, falling in the northern part of the former fiefdom San Giorgio. But a careful campaign of archaeological excavations corroborates and confirms the hypothesis according to which the ancient center corresponds to San Marco d'Alunzio. Certainly the Rocche del Crasto, located nearby, represented the main kastron of Demenna's chora. Demenna is the current San Marco d'Alunzio confirms the Arab geographer 'Al-Sharif' al-Idrisi in his 'Al kitab' al Rudjari, where he refers to the convent of San Filippo di Demenna, kanisat Sant Marku (The church of San Marco). Not far from Demenna stood the Basilian monastery of San Barbaro di Demenna, with an adjoining church. The monastery of San Barbaro di Demenna stood in the territory of Alcara li Fusi then Turiano, and precisely in the fiefdom San Giorgio, contrada Pascì. This Monastery of which the precise year of foundation is unknown, must have been most probably built towards the end of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth century, since it appears pre-existent to the Arab invasion. During the Saracen domination, the cenobio, already very flourishing, was reduced to a few monks and, even if forced to a gracious and difficult life, managed to overcome among many difficulties the difficulty of those calamitous times and to survive. After the Norman occupation, the monastery was reduced in very pitiful conditions and Count Roger in 1097 placed it under the abbey of San Filippo di Demenna, whose abbot Gregorio took care of the restoration works and in a few years it caused it to flourish again. In 1323 the monastery was ceded to a powerful lord, a certain Giovanni di Forlì, for two bodies, that is, about five quintals and a half, of wheat per year. So after more than 5 centuries of life, the old Basilian monastery of San Barbarian of Demenna.
The Val Dèmone sometimes referred to as Valdemone, Val di Demona or Val Demona was one of the valleys (or real domains beyond the Faro) in which Sicily was subdivided from the Muslim domination to the Bourbon period. The positions on the origin of Dimnsac-Deminæ were therefore different. According to the scholar and orientalist Michele Amari they would have to be searched in the Greek language, in particular he supposed that it could derive from the name with which the inhabitants of that territory were indicated, during the Arab conquest, that is "persisting" or "permanent" (perhaps in the faith or in the Empire), as it would derive from the present participle of the verb διαμένω (perpetual, lasting) of the Byzantine Greek, ie tondemenon, term that gave name to the vall and at the same time to a fortress later become city later called Demona or Demenna. Significant is the fact that a throat near Rometta, capital of Sikelia thema not yet dissolved, is called in a document of 963 "Dimnasc" (which pronounced would be dimnaʃ). Other hypotheses bring the etymology to the woodedness of the Nebrodi mountains, for which the territory would have been called Vallis Nemorum, or land of the woods; or they base the bases on a legend that would indicate Etna as inhabited by demons and would like the volcano as a point of access to the underworld, from which the territory would have been called Vallis Dæmonorum and finally there were those who put forward a presumed from Lacedemoni, the inhabitants of Sparta. Val Demone was the last part of the island to be conquered by the Arabs in the 10th century. Christian refugees from other parts of Sicily congregated there, and the region remained in contact with the Byzantine provinces in southern Italy. It was the base for the Byzantine attempt to reconquer Sicily under George Maniakes in the early 11th century. Consequently it was the least Arabicized and Islamicized part of Sicily, and was still mostly Greek-speaking at the time of the Norman conquest in the 11th century.
San Marco d'Alunzio is an Italian town of 1.996 inhabitants of the metropolitan city of Messina in Sicily. It is part of the circuit of the most beautiful villages in Italy. It is a municipality of the Nebrodi Park. Its foundation dates back to the 4th century BC and during the period of Greek domination it was a flourishing center called Alontion (Αλοντιον) and it fought its own currency. During the Punic Wars it was conquered by the Romans, who proclaimed it autonomous municipium, renaming it Aluntium and, in this period, the town experienced an artistic and economic development of which there is still evidence in archaeological monuments and in a vast epigraphic literature. It will also be cited by Pliny and Cicero himself in the famous trial against Verre, which seized the treasures of many Sicilian cities. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire (in the VI century AD), in a period of full decadence, a community of Byzantine refugees from Sparta came to Aluntium, who called it Demenna, and then by the Arabs who surrounded the town of walls and they made it the political administrative center of a vast area of Sicily called Val Demone. According to the historian Ali Ibn al-Athir, the Islamists attempted a first siege in 901, succeeding the following year in putting the inhabitants to flight. But the Byzantines succeeded in resuming it by forcing the Muslims in 910 to new battles until the final submission. The Normans, defeated the Arabs, made it their center of government and called it San Marco in honor of the evangelist and in memory of the first city conquered in Calabria. From the eleventh century it was the domain of Robert the Guiscard of the Altavilla, who chose it as a starting point and as a military garrison for the conquest of Sicily. In this period the monastery of the Benedictine nuns was built with the adjoining church of the Santissimo Salvatore. In 1061 Roberto il Guiscardo founded the first Norman castle of Sicily, dedicating it to San Marco, thus erasing the memory of Demenna, in order to eradicate the memory of the Arab era. In 1150 the geographer ibn Idris describes it as: "thriving locality, with a flourishing silk production and with an arsenal on the coast for the construction of canals with the woods taken from the rich forests of the hinterland."
Troina (Traina) is a town and comune (municipality) in the province of Enna, Sicily, southern Italy. It is located in the Nebrodi Park. Excavations have proved that the area of Troina was settled as early as the 7th millennium BC (a farm dating from that period, and a later necropolis). Of the Greek town (most likely known as Engyon) parts of the 4th-century-BC walls remain, while from the Roman age are baths. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire it was a Byzantine stronghold and during the Islamic period the religious and moral capital of the Greek and Christian orthodox part of Sicily; Roger I of Sicily had in its castle (which he captured in 1061) also a start base of his conquest of the island. Nicosia (Nicusìa, Lefkosia) is a village and comune of the province of Enna in Sicily, southern Italy. Nicosia, along with Troina are the northernmost towns in the province of Enna. The vicinity traditionally contained are salt mines and arable lands. The origin of Nicosia is uncertain. Engio, Erbita and Imachara are the three cities of antiquity with which historians have attempted to identify Nicosia with, but there is no evidence that the mentioned towns are in fact Nicosia. The present name of the town suggests Greek origins: it is believed to get its name from Saint Nicholas (Νίκου Οίκος). Another theory suggests it is a derivative of the Greek saying "City of Victory" (Νίκης Οίκος). The town is believed to stand on the site of the ancient Engynum. The modern town was founded by Byzantine colonists in the 7th century. It expanded under the Arab domination and later under that of the Normans, who settled numerous immigrants from Lombardy and Piedmont, called "Lombards", giving rise to the Gallo-Italic dialect still spoken in the town and surrounds. King William II made Nicosia a royal city. It played an important strategic role, favoured by its position halfway between Palermo and Messina. It often gave hospitality to important figures, including Emperor Charles V.
Πηγή : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicle_of_Monemvasia
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastero_di_San_Barbaro_di_Demenna
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marco_d%27Alunzio
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcara_li_Fusi
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demenna
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Demone
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Demone
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troina
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebrodi
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicosia,_Sicily
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman-Arab-Byzantine_culture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_language
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily
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