Introduction to Sicily During the 7th and 8th centuries, Sicily was raided from
Tunis. The eventual Muslim Arab conquest of Byzantine Sicily was piecemeal and slow. The region was a frontier zone, even after the
fall of Taormina in 962, which completed the invasion. Romance languages, such as
African Romance, and
Byzantine Greek continued to be used in the island well after the Arabic conquest. Its speakers were largely made up of Sicilian Muslims. However, based on the foundation charter on the
Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (written in both Greek and Arabic), it can be speculated that Siculo-Arabic was also the mother tongue for many Sicilian, in this case Palermo’s,
Orthodox Christians.
Norman kingdom of Sicily When the Normans entered Sicily, the island was divided into two main non-Latin linguistic groups: • Arabic speakers, mostly in
Palermo,
Agrigento,
Butera,
Enna and
Noto • Greek speakers, mostly in
Messina,
Taormina,
Cefalù,
Catania and
Syracuse In 1086, the Normans managed to secure the conversion of the last important
Kalbid ruler of
Enna Ibn Hamud. This conversion along with the Norman adoption of many Arab governing customs resulted in the emergence of a Christian Siculo-Arabic language. During the Norman era the
chancery office operated in Arabic, Greek and Latin. '', upside-down with North oriented up. The
Nozhat al-mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-afaq (, lit. "The Excursion of One Eager to Penetrate the Distant Horizons"), most often known as the
Tabula Rogeriana (lit.
The Book of Roger in
Latin) is a description of the world and
world map created by the Palermo-based
Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154. Al-Idrisi worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map for fifteen years at the court of the
Norman King
Roger II of Sicily, who commissioned the work around 1138.
Decline after 1200 In the post-conquest period, both Arabic and Greek were sometimes used by the new rulers and subsequently used in the king's fiscal administration, which managed royal lands and men in Sicily and
Calabria. The many documents that it issued are among the main and most important sources for Arabic in Sicily. However, when the
Hohenstaufen replaced the Normans, Arabic was dropped as a language of government in 1198 and the Hohenstaufen expelled the remaining Muslims to
Lucera and North Africa in the 13th century. Due to the expulsions, the only remaining Siculo-Arabic speakers were Christians. When the
Aragonese took Sicily, they introduced Catalan nobility, made Latin the only official language; Greek and Arabic official records in Sicily ceased to exist by the 14th century.
Arabic influence continued in a number of
Sicilian words. Most of these terms relate to
agriculture and related activities. The last non-Maltese dialect of Siculo-Arabic went extinct around the start of the 19th century if not before. ==Maltese language==