Periodic Reporting for period 5 - DOCUMULT (Documenting Multiculturalism: coexistence, law and multiculturalism in the administrative and legal documents of Norman and Hohenstaufen Sicily, c.1060-c.1266)
Reporting period: 2024-10-01 to 2025-09-30
From the mid 11th-mid 13th centuries, Sicily was ruled by the Hauteville family from Normandy and their Hohenstaufen successors. For most of that time, the indigenous Muslim and Greek Christian inhabitants constituted the demographic majority. DocuMult investigated the coexistence of these diverse communities under their Norman and Hohenstaufen rulers (Arabic-speaking Muslims and Jews, Greek and Latin Christians): the legal foundations upon which the coexistence of the subject communities rested; the nature, extent and results of cultural, linguistic and social interactions between them; and variation of the above in time (c.1060–c.1284) and place within the island. The objective was to create tools to study and begin to write the history of the subject communities of Norman Sicily from the bottom up using documentary rather than narrative sources, illustrating as far as possible the full variety in space and time.
DocuMult made new critical editions of the administrative and legal documents for Norman Sicily in the three principal administrative languages — Arabic, Greek and Latin. These texts are being published and used to populate a database to which further data from the non-documentary sources will be added. These data are now being used to generate a series of powerful research tools that will revolutionise the future study of the history of Norman Sicily. A series of summative studies are in preparation document, analyse and discuss different aspects of coexistence and popular multiculturalism in Norman Sicily and set the case of Sicily in the wider Mediterranean context.
DocuMult is important in three ways. First, we are beginning both to write a new history of Norman Sicily and to provide scholars, students and the reading public with a series of fundamental research tools. First, new editions of the documents themselves which have, until now, been available only in their original languages, Arabic (fig.1) Judaeo-Arabic (fig.2) Greek (fig.3) and Latin (fig.4) in a wide variety of books and journals. Now they are being published for the first time on open access in accurate, up-to-date editions in the original languages with English and Italian translations, and historical and textual commentaries. In addition, new analytical research tools will provide a resource for the history of Sicily, universally accessible online to academics, teachers, students and the general public.
Second, DocuMult has added to the primary sources available for Norman Sicily by publishing previously unedited documents for the first time, such as the hundreds of Greek documents from Messina in the Archivo Ducal de Medinaceli (Toledo). DocuMult is also discovering and publishing documents that were unknown before the start of the project, including a group of Arabic documents from the periods of Kalbid and Norman rule now preserved in the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi (Istanbul). The corpus of primary documentary sources available for the study of Norman Sicily is now far greater than it was at its beginning.
Third, a great deal of nonsense is currently said and written for popular consumption about coexistence and multiculturalism in Norman Sicily. The administrative and legal documents offer a series of pictures of the Norman past that are far more complicated, nuanced, vivid, humanising and evidence-based. History is not cyclical, and people consistently fail to learn from history, but a society’s view of its past does change over time and can change for the better. Our project aims to contribute to supplanting the current, inaccurate, popular image of multiculturalism in Norman Sicily with one firmly based upon the evidence of the documents and other primary sources.
DocuMult made new critical editions of the administrative and legal documents for Norman Sicily in the three principal administrative languages — Arabic, Greek and Latin. These texts are being published and used to populate a database to which further data from the non-documentary sources will be added. These data are now being used to generate a series of powerful research tools that will revolutionise the future study of the history of Norman Sicily. A series of summative studies are in preparation document, analyse and discuss different aspects of coexistence and popular multiculturalism in Norman Sicily and set the case of Sicily in the wider Mediterranean context.
DocuMult is important in three ways. First, we are beginning both to write a new history of Norman Sicily and to provide scholars, students and the reading public with a series of fundamental research tools. First, new editions of the documents themselves which have, until now, been available only in their original languages, Arabic (fig.1) Judaeo-Arabic (fig.2) Greek (fig.3) and Latin (fig.4) in a wide variety of books and journals. Now they are being published for the first time on open access in accurate, up-to-date editions in the original languages with English and Italian translations, and historical and textual commentaries. In addition, new analytical research tools will provide a resource for the history of Sicily, universally accessible online to academics, teachers, students and the general public.
Second, DocuMult has added to the primary sources available for Norman Sicily by publishing previously unedited documents for the first time, such as the hundreds of Greek documents from Messina in the Archivo Ducal de Medinaceli (Toledo). DocuMult is also discovering and publishing documents that were unknown before the start of the project, including a group of Arabic documents from the periods of Kalbid and Norman rule now preserved in the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi (Istanbul). The corpus of primary documentary sources available for the study of Norman Sicily is now far greater than it was at its beginning.
Third, a great deal of nonsense is currently said and written for popular consumption about coexistence and multiculturalism in Norman Sicily. The administrative and legal documents offer a series of pictures of the Norman past that are far more complicated, nuanced, vivid, humanising and evidence-based. History is not cyclical, and people consistently fail to learn from history, but a society’s view of its past does change over time and can change for the better. Our project aims to contribute to supplanting the current, inaccurate, popular image of multiculturalism in Norman Sicily with one firmly based upon the evidence of the documents and other primary sources.
DocuMult has prepared new editions of more than 635 documents from Norman Sicily and collected into a single corpus that can be electronically searched, and successfully developed a system for collecting and analysing data from them for the project's fundamental research tools.
Previously, most of the Arabic and Greek documents were available only in an edition by Salvatore Cusa (1868), notorious for its inaccuracy and scientific inadequacy. The Greek team has produced new, accurate transcriptions of all the Greek documents edited by Cusa and of very nearly all that he overlooked, so that accurate transcriptions of almost all the Greek documents are now in the database. The whole corpus has been translated into Italian and English translations and equipped with summaries and basic textual commentaries. The publication of pre-print editions of approximately 210 Greek documents from the Norman period is in preparation.
All of the Arabic documents edited by Cusa, and all those overlooked by or unknown to him, were entered into database, edited, translated, equipped with textual and historical commentary, palaeographical analysis, and analytical introductions. The first critical edition of all of the documents containing Arabic, including the Latin translations of lost Arabic originals and the deperdita (Arabic documents that are lost and known only through mentions in other primary sources), is now in preparation. Pre-print editions of these are being published on The Arabic Documents of Sicily site (https://documult.freeforums.net(opens in new window)) in order to share them as widely as possible before the publication of the printed corpus.
There are more Latin documents for the Norman and Hohenstaufen periods than the sum of all the Arabic and Greek documents. The challenge for the Latin team was to enter them all into the database. Nearly 700 Latin documents were entered into the database of which circa 300 are complete with summary, translations and textual commentary, ready for publication as pre-prints online.
Recorded lectures and seminars, videos and research publications articles are available on the DocuMult website and further publications are forthcoming.
Previously, most of the Arabic and Greek documents were available only in an edition by Salvatore Cusa (1868), notorious for its inaccuracy and scientific inadequacy. The Greek team has produced new, accurate transcriptions of all the Greek documents edited by Cusa and of very nearly all that he overlooked, so that accurate transcriptions of almost all the Greek documents are now in the database. The whole corpus has been translated into Italian and English translations and equipped with summaries and basic textual commentaries. The publication of pre-print editions of approximately 210 Greek documents from the Norman period is in preparation.
All of the Arabic documents edited by Cusa, and all those overlooked by or unknown to him, were entered into database, edited, translated, equipped with textual and historical commentary, palaeographical analysis, and analytical introductions. The first critical edition of all of the documents containing Arabic, including the Latin translations of lost Arabic originals and the deperdita (Arabic documents that are lost and known only through mentions in other primary sources), is now in preparation. Pre-print editions of these are being published on The Arabic Documents of Sicily site (https://documult.freeforums.net(opens in new window)) in order to share them as widely as possible before the publication of the printed corpus.
There are more Latin documents for the Norman and Hohenstaufen periods than the sum of all the Arabic and Greek documents. The challenge for the Latin team was to enter them all into the database. Nearly 700 Latin documents were entered into the database of which circa 300 are complete with summary, translations and textual commentary, ready for publication as pre-prints online.
Recorded lectures and seminars, videos and research publications articles are available on the DocuMult website and further publications are forthcoming.
The most significant unexpected result so far has been the discovery of the first Arabic documents from the period of Islamic rule. These will be published in Nadia Jamil e Jeremy Johns, “Cinque documenti e una nuova poesia dalla Sicilia kalbita” in Giuseppe Mandalà (ed.), Ṣiqilliyya. Studi sulla Sicilia medievale in onore di Adalgisa De Simone, Roma, Istituto per l’Oriente “Carlo Alfonso Nallino” (La Sicilia islamica: testi, ricerche letterarie e linguistiche), 2026, in press.
The premise of DocuMult is that the detailed analysis of the administrative and legal documents of Norman Sicily will enable us to investigate “popular multiculturalism”. At this stage, the principal measure of progress is to be found in the many points of detail that have emerged whilst entering the documents into the database and beginning their analysis. Most of these minutiae have in themselves no more than slight significance and only amount to important progress when amassed together. Such minutiae are found in almost every document and accumulate to validate the project’s initial premise, attesting to the efficacy of its methodology. It is still far too early to speculate as to precisely how and to what extent DocuMult’s new history of coexistence and popular multiculturalism in Norman Sicily will advance beyond the state of the art but it is already abundantly clear that such progress will be, as never before, based on the documentary evidence. And that may cause us fundamentally to modify assumptions that have changed little over the last 150 years.
The premise of DocuMult is that the detailed analysis of the administrative and legal documents of Norman Sicily will enable us to investigate “popular multiculturalism”. At this stage, the principal measure of progress is to be found in the many points of detail that have emerged whilst entering the documents into the database and beginning their analysis. Most of these minutiae have in themselves no more than slight significance and only amount to important progress when amassed together. Such minutiae are found in almost every document and accumulate to validate the project’s initial premise, attesting to the efficacy of its methodology. It is still far too early to speculate as to precisely how and to what extent DocuMult’s new history of coexistence and popular multiculturalism in Norman Sicily will advance beyond the state of the art but it is already abundantly clear that such progress will be, as never before, based on the documentary evidence. And that may cause us fundamentally to modify assumptions that have changed little over the last 150 years.