emirate of Bari
{{Short description|c. 847 – 871 Islamic State in Apulia}}
{{Infobox Former Country
| native_name = {{native name|ar|إمارة باري}}
| conventional_long_name = Emirate of Bari
| common_name =
| status = De jure governorate of the Abbasid Caliphate
| year_start = 847
| year_end = 871
| common_languages =
| religion =
| image_map = Bari in Italy.svg
| map_caption = Location of the Emirate in present-day Italy
| capital = Bari
| government_type = Monarchy
| title_leader = Emir
| leader1 = Khalfun
| year_leader1 = 847–{{circa}}852
| leader2 = Sawdan
| p1 = Byzantine Empire under the Amorian dynasty{{!}}Byzantine Empire
| s1 = Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty{{!}}Byzantine Empire
| flag_p1 = Byzantine Calvary cross potent (transparent).png
| year_leader2 = {{circa}}857-871
| currency =
| flag_s1 = Byzantine Calvary cross potent (transparent).png
| today = Italy
}}
The Emirate of Bari ({{Langx|ar|إمارة باري}}) was a short-lived Islamic state in Apulia (in present-day Italy), ruled by Berbers{{Citation|last=Golvin|first=L.|title=Bari . (Émirat berbère du IXe siècle)|date=1985-11-01|url=http://journals.openedition.org/encyclopedieberbere/1296|work=Encyclopédie berbère|pages=1361–1365|publisher=Éditions Peeters|language=fr|isbn=9782857445098|access-date=2019-02-06}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lYc0DwAAQBAJ&q=emirate+bari+berbers&pg=PA208|title=The Near East: A Cultural History|last=Cotterell|first=Arthur|date=2017-08-15|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9781849049351|language=en}}{{cite book|author=Corisande Fenwick, Glaire D. Anderson, Mariam Rosser-Owen|title=The Aghlabids and Their Neighbors|year=2017|publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-35604-7|page=470}}{{cite book|author=Allen James Fromherz|title=Near West|year=2016|publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-1-4744-1007-6|page=59}} {{original research span|date=May 2025|and perhaps Black Africans.}}Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 21: "The last amir of Bari held sway between 857 and 865 and was the bearer of another unusual name: Sawdan. In Latin sources, he is known as ‘Seodan’ or ‘Saugdan’. His name was rendered in different forms, but there is an implication in it that he was originally from sub-Saharan Africa. A problematic reference to him in an unedited text, which can be read as 'Sawdān al-Māwrī' ( 'the Moor' , ultimately from the Greek , mavros , 'black' ), again suggests that, like the previous commanders of the Muslim forces in Bari, they were not Arab Aghlabid commanders, but their ‘clients’. If the term ‘moor’ was applied to him, then it was most likely a Latin or Greek loan word, and was thus probably acquired while in Italy. An alternative reading would give 'al-Māzarī', indicating a Sicilian provenance."{{Failed verification|reason=the source doesn't say that the Emirate of Bari was ruled by Black Africans|talk=Black Africans|date=April 2025}} Controlled from the South Italian city of Bari, it was established in about 847 CE when the region was taken from the Byzantine Empire, but fell in 871 to the army of the Carolingian emperor Louis II.
Foundation
Bari first became the object of Aghlabid raids in late 840 or early 841, when it was briefly occupied.Kreutz, 25. According to Al-Baladhuri, Bari was conquered from the Byzantine Empire by Kalfün around 847, a mawla—perhaps a servant or escaped slave—of the Aghlabid Emir of Africa.Kreutz, 38. Kalfün (Khalfun) was probably of Berber stock, possibly from the Emirate of Sicily originally. The conquest was seen by contemporary Muslims as unimportant, having been carried out by a minor figure without the support of any other Muslim state. However, Kalfün's successor Mufarrag ibn Sallam sent requests to Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil in Baghdad as well as to his provincial governor of Egypt asking for recognition of the conquest with the title of wali, a governor ruling over a province of the Caliphate, which was granted. Mufarrag expanded Muslim influence and enlarged the territory of the emirate.
Rule of Sawdan
The third and last emir of Bari was Sawdan (also known as Soldan),{{cite book |last1=Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus |title=De Administrando Imperio |trans-title=On the Governance of the Empire |orig-date=948-952 |date=1967 |publisher=Dumbarton Oaks |location=Washington, DC |isbn=0-88402-021-5 |pages=127–135 |edition=New Revised |translator-last=Jenkins |translator-first=R.J.H |others=Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik |url=https://archive.org/download/cfhb-11.1-nicetae-choniatae-historia/CFHB%2001_Constantine%20VII_De%20Administrando%20Imperio.pdf |access-date=28 August 2024 |ref=DeAdministandoImperio |language=grc, en |chapter=29. Of Dalmatia and of the adjacent nations in it}} who came to power around 857 after the murder of his predecessor Mufarrag. He invaded the lands of the Lombard Principality of Benevento, forcing Prince Adelchis to pay tribute. In 864 he finally obtained the official investiture requested initially by Mufarrag. In the middle of the 860s, a Frankish monk named Bernard and two companions stopped in Bari on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.Kreutz, 39. They successfully petitioned Sawdan for letters of safe-conduct all the way through Egypt and the Holy Land. According to the Itinerarium Bernardi, Bernard's record of the event, Bari, the civitatem Sarracenorum, had formerly belonged to the "Beneventans".
The Hebrew Chronicle of Ahimaaz records that Sawdan, the last emir of Bari, ruled the city wisely and was on good terms with the eminent Jewish scholar Abu Aaron. Christian monastic chronicles, however, portray the emir as nequissimus ac sceleratissimus: "most impossible and wicked". Certainly Muslims raids on Christians (and Jews) did not cease during Sawdan's reign.{{fact|date=April 2018}} There is evidence for high civilisation in Bari at this point.Drew, 135.Kreuger, 761. Giosuè Musca suggests that the emirate was a boon to the regional economy, and that during this time the slave trade,Much to the dismay of pious ecclesiastics like Bernard (Kreutz, 39). wine trade, and trade in pottery flourished. Under Sawdan the city of Bari was embellished with a mosque, palaces, and public works.
In 859, Lambert I of Spoleto joined Gerard, count of Marsi, Maielpoto, gastald of Telese, and Wandelbert, gastald of Boiano, to prevent Sawdan from re-entering Bari after a campaign against Capua and the Terra di Lavoro. Despite a bloody battle, the emir successfully entered his capital.
The emirate of Bari lasted long enough to enter into relations with its Christian neighbours. According to the Chronicon Salernitanum, ambassadors (legati) were sent to Salerno where they stayed in the episcopal palace, much to the dismay of the bishop. Bari also served as a refuge for at least one political rival of the Carolingian emperor Louis II, a man of Spoleto who fled to it during a revolt.Kreutz, 40.
Fall
{{main|Louis II's campaign against Bari (866–871)}}
File:Emperor Louis II before Bari.jpg
In 865, Louis II, perhaps pressured by the Church, always uncomfortable with a Muslim state in Italy's midst, issued a capitulary calling upon the fighting men of northern Italy to gather at Lucera in the spring of 866 for an assault on Bari. It is unknown, from contemporary sources, whether this force ever marched on Bari, but in the summer of that year the emperor was touring the Campania with his empress, Engelberga, and receiving strong urging from the Lombard princes—Adelchis of Benevento, Guaifer of Salerno, and Landulf II of Capua—to attack Bari again.
It was not until the spring of 867 that Louis took action against the emirate. He immediately besieged Matera and Oria, recently conquered, and burnt the former.Kreutz, 41. Oria was a prosperous locale before the Muslim conquest; Barbara Kreutz thus conjectures that Matera resisted Louis while Oria welcomed him: the former thus was razed.Kreutz, 172, n26. The capture of the cities is referred to both in Erchempert and Lupus Protospatharius. This may have severed communications between Bari and Taranto, the other pole of Muslim power in southern Italy. Louis established a garrison at Canosa on the frontier between Benevento and Bari, but retired to the former by March 868. It was probably at about this time that Louis entered into negotiations with the new Byzantine emperor, Basil I. A marriage between Louis's daughter and Basil's eldest son, Constantine, was probably discussed in return for Byzantine naval assistance in the taking of Bari.Kreutz, 42. The Chronicon Salernitanum inconsistently attaches the initiative for such talks to Louis and then Basil.
The joint attack was projected for late in the summer of 869 and Louis remained at Benevento planning as late as June. The Byzantine fleet—of four hundred ships if the Annales Bertiniani are to be trusted—arrived under the command of Nicetas with the expectation that Louis would hand over his daughter immediately.Kreutz, 43. This he refused to do, for no known reason, but perhaps because Nicetas had refused to recognise his imperial title, since Louis later refers in a letter to the commander's "insulting behaviour".Kreutz, 44. Perhaps, however, the fleet simply arrived too late in autumn.
In 870 the Bariot Muslims stepped up their raids, going so far as to ravage the Gargano Peninsula including the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo.Kreutz, 45. The Emperor Louis organised a response, fighting his way deep into Apulia and Calabria but bypassing major population centres like Bari or Taranto. A few towns were apparently freed of Muslim control and the various Muslim bands encountered were universally defeated. Probably encouraged by these successes, Louis attacked Bari with a ground force of Franks, Germans and Lombards and aided by a fleet of Sclavini. In February 871 the citadel fell and Sawdan was captured and taken to Benevento in chains. The report found in the De Administrando Imperio of Constantine Porphyrogenitus that the Byzantines played a major role in the city's fall is probably a concoction.Kreutz, 173 n45. In the siege of Arab Bari (868–871) participated and Domagoj with fleet of Ragusa which, according to Constantine VII transported Croats and other Archons of Slavs on their ships to Longobardia.Vedran Duančić; (2008) Hrvatska između Bizanta i Franačke (in Croatian) p. 17; [https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=82757]
List of emirs
- Kalfün (Khalfun), 841–{{circa}}852
- Mufarrag ibn Sallam, {{circa}}852–{{circa}}857
- Sawdan (Sawdān), {{circa}}857–871
Notes
{{reflist|30em}}
Bibliography
=Primary sources=
{{wikisource|The Origins of the Islamic State}}
The following are available as part of Sources of Lombard History at the Institut für Mittelalter Forschung:
{{refbegin}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20220211112032/https://www.oeaw.ac.at/gema/benedicti.htm Chronica Sancti Benedicti Casinensis]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070422122723/http://www.oeaw.ac.at/gema/salerni.htm Chronicon Salernitanum]
- Erchempert. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070206190912/http://www.oeaw.ac.at/gema/erchempert.htm Historiola]
{{refend}}See too the letter of Emperor Louis II to Emperor Basil I, written in 871 after the capture of Bari, in [https://web.archive.org/web/20211017060435/http://turbulentpriests.group.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Emperor-Louis-II-of-Italy-to-Emperor-Basil-I.pdf English translation].
=Secondary sources=
{{refbegin}}
- {{cite book |first=Lorenzo M. |last=Bondioli |chapter=Islamic Bari between the Aghlabids and the Two Empires|pages=470–490 |title=The Aghlabids and Their Neighbors: Art and Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa |editor1=Glaire D. Anderson |editor2=Corisande Fenwick |editor3=Mariam Rosser-Owen |publisher=Brill |year=2018}}
- Di Branco, Marco; Wolf, Kordula. (2013) [https://www.academia.edu/4181291/Berbers_and_Arabs_in_the_Maghreb_and_Europe_Medieval_Period "Berbers and Arabs in the Maghreb and Europe, medieval era"]. The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, ed. Immanuel Ness, vol. 2. Chichester, pp. 695–702.
- Kreutz, Barbara M. (1996) [http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780812205435 Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries]. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. {{ISBN|0-8122-1587-7}}.
- Musca, Giosuè (1964). L'emirato di Bari, 847–871. (Università degli Studi di Bari Istituto di Storia Medievale e Moderna, 4.) Bari: Dedalo Litostampa.
- Drew, K. F. (1965) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1863071 Review] of L'emirato di Bari, 847–871, Giosuè Musca. The American Historical Review, 71:1 (Oct.), p. 135.
- Krueger, Hilmar C. (1966) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2852342 Review] of L'emirato di Bari, 847–871, Giosuè Musca. Speculum, 41:4 (Oct.), p. 761.
{{refend}}
{{Former monarchies Italian peninsula}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bari, Emirate of}}
Category:Former Islamic monarchies in Europe
Category:871 disestablishments