docfiles.Islam_in_Malta Maven / Gradle / Ivy

Go to download
Islam in Malta, although only recently being reintroduced in a sizeable number in the latter half of the 20th century, has had a historically profound impact upon the country—especially its language and agriculture—as a consequence of previous centuries of Muslim control and presence on its islands. Today, the main organizations represented in Malta are the Libyan World Islamic Call Society and the minority Ahmadiyya.[1]Prior to Muslim rule, Eastern Christianity had been prominent in Malta during the time of Byzantine rule and even remained significant during the Islamic period.[2][3]Islam is believed to have been introduced to Malta when the North African Aghlabids, first led by Halaf al-Hadim and later by Sawada ibn Muhammad,[4] conquered the islands from the Byzantines, after arriving from Sicily in 870[5] (as part of the wider Arab–Byzantine wars).[6] However, it has also been argued that the islands were occupied by Muslims earlier in the 9th, and possibly 8th, century.[7] The Aghlabids established their capital in Mdina.[8] The old Roman fortification, later to become Fort St Angelo, was also extended.[9]According to the Arab chronicler and geographer Muhammad bin Abd al-Munim al-Himyari (author of Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar), following the Muslim attack and conquest, Malta was practically uninhabited until it was recolonised by Muslims from Sicily in 1048–1049, or possibly several decades earlier.[4]The Muslims generally tolerated the Christian population of Malta.[10]Malta returned to Christian European rule with the Norman conquest in 1091. It was, along with Noto on the southern tip of Sicily, the last Arab stronghold in the region to fall to the Christians.[11]The Arab administration was initially kept in place[12] and Muslims were allowed to practise their religion freely until the 13th century.[13] The Normans allowed an emir to remain in power with the understanding that he would pay an annual tribute to them in mules, horses, and munitions.[14] As a result of this favourable environment, Muslims continued to demographically and economically dominate Malta for at least another 150 years after the Christian conquest.[15]In 1122 Malta experienced a Muslim uprising and in 1127 Roger II of Sicily reconquered the islands.[16]Even in 1175, Burchard, bishop of Strasbourg, an envoy of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, had the impression, based upon his brief visit to Malta, that it was exclusively or mainly inhabited by Muslims.[17]In 1224, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, sent an expedition against Malta to establish royal control and prevent its Muslim population from helping a Muslim rebellion in the Kingdom of Sicily.[18]The conquest of the Normans would lead to the gradual Latinization and subsequent firm establishment of Roman Catholicism in Malta, after previous respective Eastern Orthodox and Islamic domination.[2][3]According to a report in 1240 or 1241 by Gililberto Abbate, who was the royal governor of Frederick II of Sicily during the Genoese Period of the County of Malta,[19] in that year the islands of Malta and Gozo had 836 Muslim families, 250 Christian families and 33 Jewish families.[20]In 1266, Malta was turned over in fiefdom to Charles of Anjou, brother of France’s King Louis IX, who retained it in ownership until 1283. Eventually, during Charles's rule religious coexistence became precarious in Malta, since he had a genuine intolerance of religions other than Roman Catholicism.[21] However, Malta's links with Africa would still remain strong until the beginning of Spanish rule in 1283.[22]By the end of the 15th century all Maltese Muslims would be forced to convert to Christianity and had to find ways to disguise their previous identities.[23] Notwithstanding the claim in this latter statement (attributed to the author Stefan Goodwin), Professor Godfrey Wettinger, who specialized in Malta's medieval history and whose work is used to support the claim, writes that the medieval Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun (1332—1406), puts the expulsion of Islam from Malta to the year 1249. Wettinger goes on to say that "there is no doubt that by the beginning of Angevin times [i.e. shortly after 1249] no professed Muslim Maltese remained either as free persons or even as serfs on the island."[24]During the period of rule under the Knights Hospitaller, thousands of Muslim slaves, captured as a result of maritime raids,[19] were taken to Malta.[25] There was also a deliberate and ultimately successful campaign, using disinformation and often led by the Catholic clergy, to deemphasize Malta's historic links with Africa and Islam.[26] This distorted history "determined the course of Maltese historiography till the second half of the twentieth century",[27] and it created the rampant Islamophobia which has traditionally been a feature of Malta (as well as other southern European states).[28]In 2003, of the estimated 3,000 Muslims in Malta, approximately 2,250 were foreigners, approximately 600 were naturalised citizens, and approximately 150 were native-born Maltese[29]—most notably Mario Farrugia Borg, who is part of the personal secretariat of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat[30] and was the first Maltese public officer to take an oath on the Koran when co-opted into the Qormi local council in 1998.[31] By 2010, there were approximately 6,000 Muslims in Malta—most of whom are Sunni and foreigners.[32][a]There is one mosque called the Islamic Centre of Paola in Paola,[33] founded in 1978 by the World Islamic Call Society, and one adjoining Muslim school called the Maryam al-Batool school.[34]The strongest legacy of Islam in Malta is the Maltese language,[34] and most place names (other than the names Malta and Gozo[35]) are Arabic, as are most surnames, e.g. Borg, Cassar, Chetcuti, Farrugia, Fenech, Micallef, Mifsud and Zammit.[36][37] It has been argued that this survival of the Maltese language, as opposed to the extinction of Siculo-Arabic in Sicily, is probably due to the eventual large-scale conversions to Christianity of the proportionally large Maltese Muslim population.[38]The Muslims also introduced innovative and skillful irrigation techniques such as the water-wheel known as the Noria or Sienja,[39] all of which made Malta more fertile.[40] They also introduced sweet pastries and spices and new crops, including; citrus, figs, almond,[9] as well as the cultivation of the cotton plant, which would become the mainstay of the Maltese economy for several centuries,[41] until the latter stages of the rule of the Knights of St. John.[39] The distinctive landscape of terraced fields is also the result of introduced ancient Arab methods.[9]In modern times, Malta's unique culture has enabled it to serve as Europe's "bridge" to the Arab cultures and economies of North Africa.[42]Other prominent Maltese subsequently contributed to popular folklore and legends which held that Muslims of African origin had never inhabited Malta in large numbers, including Domenico Magri, also a priest. As these distortions bore fruit and circulated within the general populace, numerous Maltese became convinced that their Semitic tongue could only have come from illustrious and pioneering Asiatic Phoenicians and not under any circumstances from neighboring Arab-speaking Africans who for reasons having to do with religion, national pride, and “race” the Maltese were more comfortable viewing as implacable enemies and inferiors…Though recent scholarly opinion in Malta is virtually unanimous that Malta’s linguistic and demographic connections are much stronger with her Arab and Berber neighbors than prehistoric Phoenicia, once out of a “Pandora’s Box,” legends die hard.  |accessdate= requires |url= (help) CS1 maint: Extra text (link)In the words of Aquilina, “The Arabs are linguistically the most important people that ever managed the affairs of the country…for there is no doubt that, allowing for a number of peculiarities and erratic developments, Maltese is structurally an Arabic dialect.”  |accessdate= requires |url= (help) CS1 maint: Extra text (link)