The Sicily ( Italian Sicilia in and Sicilian) is a autonomous region of the Italy and largest island of the the Mediterranean. In addition to Italian who is the official language, the majority of the inhabitants speak also the Sicilien, language source Latin with influences Arab, Germanic, Spanish, French and Italian. Inside even of the Sicilian dialect, one finds other dialects, different according to the places from Sicily. Its capital is the town of Palermo.

History

Brief chronology

  • OJ: arrival of the Sicanes in the north of the island

  • v. 1270 av. J. - C.: arrival of the Sicules in the south of the island
  • eighth century BC: counters Phéniciens in the North-West (Palermo); Greek colonization in the east (Naxos, Syracuse, Zancle, Metz-native)
  • : time of the tyrants
  • Towards -550 front J. - C.: Defeat of the Greeks vis-a-vis the general Carthaginian Malco.
  • 480 av. J. - C.: Carthaginian defeat with Himère
  • 241 av. J. - C.: Carthage yields Sicily to Rome after the First Punic War
  • 468 - 476: domination of the Vandals
  • 491: domination of the Ostrogoths
  • 535: Byzantine conquest
  • 827 - 878: Arab Conquest
  • 1060: invasion Norman
  • 1091: end of the Arab domination
  • 1130 - 1194: feudal and Norman kingdom of Sicily
  • 1194 - 1266: imperial period: reign of the emperors Henri VI and Frederic II. Disorders
  • 1266 - 1282: period angevine (French domination)
  • 1282 -: Aragonese period
  • 1415 - 1713: Spanish domination on Sicily
  • 1442: Alphonse V of Aragon conquers Naples
  • 1713 - 1735: period of instability: House of Savoy, emperor
  • 1735 - 1860: House of the Bourbons of Spain
  • 1861: kingdom of Italy
  • 1946: statute of regional autonomy

Mythological Sicily

Many legends have as a framework Sicily:
  • Aréthuse : to see Syracuse
  • the architect of the Labyrinth of Crete, Maze, found refuge in Sicily near the king Cocalos. After having escaped with the labyrinth of the king Minos, this one sought it through many territories, it had then the idea to launch a challenge that only a man as Dédale could succeed. He promised a strong reward with that which would succeed in making pass a wire through the openings of a shell. To take up the challenge, Dédale had the idea to hang the wire with an ant, the latter then crossed all the openings of the shell. Knowing that a person had made a success of the challenge in Sicily, Minos knew whereas Dédale was there. King Cocalos refused to deliver Dédale and delivered a war to Minos. The king of Crete was finally killed by the girls of Cocalos.
  • During the Gigantomachie, the giant Encelade deserted the battle field; the goddess Athéna crushes it under the island of Sicily where there remains imprisoned. Its breath of fire leaves the Etna and it causes seisms when it is turned over.
  • the Greek god Héphaïstos held a forging mill in the Etna, helped by Cyclops S blacksmiths. The Romans thought that Vulcan was in the island éponyme, of the north of Sicily. The Greek poet Pindare explains that the monster Typhon is in the mouth of Etna.
  • In the Odyssey of Homère, Ulysses and his companions unloads in Sicily and meets the cyclops Pasteur Polyphème. To escape to him, Ulysses returns it blind man by bursting his single eye to him. Undoubtedly before it becomes blind, Polyphème was in love. This love is told in two poems in Greek language of the sicilian poet Théocrite in the neighborhoods of 275 av. J.C. Polyphème éprend of beautiful the Galatée, a néréide (marine nymph). This one prefers the sicilian shepherd to him Acis. Polyphème, having keep silent them surprised unit, its rival by crushing it under a rock. Galatée then changes the blood of Acis into a river bearing its name to Sicily.
  • Charybde and Scylla: two monsters of the strait of Messine, they threaten forwarding of the Argonautes and the crew of Ulysses.
  • the Odyssey also tells that Hélios, god of the sun, had ox herds and sheep in the island of Trinacrie (Sicily). Ulysses accosts there at the time of its return towards Ithaque. Duly chapter on this subject with song XI by the soothsayer Tirésias, it prohibits its men from touching with the crowned herds. Whereas he sleeps, however, its famished men cut down cows. Photogravure claims revenge near Zeus which strikes down the ship of Ulysses, the saver alone with the passage.
  • Messine would have been rested by the legendary giant Orion, Ségeste by the survivors of the Trojan War.
  • According to Virgile, Énée was accommodated in Sicily by Acestes and collected one of the sailors of the Odyssée of Ulysses, Achaemenide.

Antiquity

The most former people of Sicily were the Elymes in the west of the island, the Sicanes in the center, and the Sicules in the oriental party, the latter probably come from the continent by pushing back towards the west of the island the older occupants. It is them which gave its name to the country.

Sicily was initially colonized by the Phéniciens, the Carthaginois and the Greek, which left many vestiges there (theater of Taormine, temples of Ségeste, Agrigente and Sélinonte inter alia). It was then controlled by princes called “tyrants” of which the famous Denys Old the and Denys the Young person (who accommodated the philosopher Plato).

Sicily was a stake in the Peloponnesian War opponent Athens with Sparte: in -415, under the influence of Alcibiade, Athens launched out in the forwarding of Sicily, benefitting from the dissentions which opposed the cities of the island: Athens answered the call of Ségeste, attacked by Sélinonte in -416. Syracuse, Corinthian colony, was allied of Sélinonte. Ségeste called upon Athens, offering even to pay the forwarding costs. At this time of the war, the loss of Eubée, and the defection of many allies of Athens had made its supplies corn precarious. The prospect to cut those of the sicilian allies of Sparte, while conquering new sources of supply was certainly a crucial factor. Forwarding took the sea under the command of Nicias, Alcibiade and Lamachos in June -415. In Sicily, Lamachos was killed and Nicias remained alone with the head of forwarding. The arrival in Syracuse of Gylippos, general Spartan, made lose with the Athenians the battle of the cuttings off around the city (October -414). The Athenian fleet was imprisoned in the roads and they sent a force of help ordered by Démosthène and Eurymédon. In August -413 the fleet was demolished with the battles of Épipoles, then the army was overcome on ground. Athens lost more than two hundred ships in this forwarding, and fifty thousand men (including seven thousand prisoners of Latomies, career of Syracuse).

Sicily was an strategic issue and economic important at the time of the two first Punic Wars.

Sicily fell to the hands from the Romains after the victory from the consul C. Lutatius Catulus into -241 to the Egates islands: this battle marked the end of the First Punic War which opposed Rome to Carthage on the sicilian theater. After this defeat, Carthage gives up Sicily which becomes a Roman province and which ensures from now on an important part of the supply of cereal Rome.

The king of Syracuse Hiéron II was faithful combined Romans during the Second Punic War but its grandson Hiéronyme, chooses into -215 the Carthaginian camp. After a series of victories of Hannibal, the catch of Syracuse in -212 advertisement the Roman rectification, and precedes the Carthaginian defeat. The day before the Empire, Sicily was the base of the resistance of the last pompéiens carried out by Sextus Pompée, wire of Pompée.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Sicily was invaded by the German people, then raised of the Byzantine Empire until the conquest Musulmane of 827 with 902.

See also: Sicily (Roman province)

The Middle Ages

Moslem Sicily

See also: Moslem Sicily

Passed during IXe century under arabo-Berber domination, Sicily is, at the beginning of the 9th century, under control of the Fatimides of Egypt conquerors of North Africa supported by the Kabyles of the Kutâma tribe. The government is entrusted by it to the dynasty kalbide of Banû Abî l-Husayn which will be the hereditary emirs during more than one century. During this period Islamization and the Arabisation will be all the more radical as an important migratory wave Berber will follow the famines which devastated the North Africa of 1004 to 1040. This period of Moslem domination of almost 250 years (Palermo was a Moslem city of 831 with 1071) will be one period of cultural diversity and religious tolerance. After the failure of the attempt at Byzantine reconquest in 965, a process of total Arabisation of the sicilian territory is set up, supported by an important Arab and Berber immigration coming from North Africa, and supported on an economic development policy and of improvement of tax management. Sicily conforms then to the economic model of the principalities of the East: agricultural production intended for the market and the palate, in particular cotton, silk, and luxury items. Mazara, at the south-western end of the island, is then the central port of the exchanges in the Mediterranean.

Some very rare Greek Christian communities manage to remain, with Palermo, Catane and in the Val Demone, in the North-East of the island. At the beginning of the 11th century, Sicily enters during one serious political crisis period. About 1030, the legitimacy of the imanat fatimide is indeed called in question and the governors kalbides are driven out island. The dynastic quarrels between rival emirates lead to a fragmentation of the capacity and a political weakening from which the Byzantines profit. And in 1037, with the assistance of a Moslem faction, the Greeks launch a new attempt at reconquest. The forwarding, led by the Greek general, which counted already three hundred Norman mercenaries lent by the prince lombard Guaimar IV of Salerno fails however in 1042.

Sicily Norman

See also: Sicily Norman

A family of Norman small landed proprietors (wire of Tancrède de Hauteville) having conquered grounds in Southern Italy, the pope charged young person, Roger, to invade Sicily to reconvert it with Catholicism, and granted to him sovereignty on the grounds to take. The conquest Norman of the island was made in about thirty years 1060 - 1090. The grandson of Roger Ier managed to make set up the island in feudal kingdom in 1130. Roger II, admiror of the Moslem culture, continued the policy of tolerance of its predecessors. The administration of the Norman kings was cosmopolitan: it gathered Greeks, of Lombards, the English and Arabs. This syncretism is found in the art of this time which combines the contributions Romance S, Islamic and Greek. The island knew one boom, in particular in agriculture.

The throne passed then, by heritage, with the Germanic dynasty of the Hohenstaufen which controlled the area starting from 1194 and adopted Palermo like capital in 1220. It is by its marriage with the girl of Roger II that the emperor Henri VI establishes his sovereignty on Sicily. His/her son, the emperor Frederic II, will pass the essence of his existence in the island.

Conflicts between Hohenstaufen and the papacy caused in 1266 the conquest of the island by Charles Ier, count of Anjou and brother of the king de France Louis IX. This one dissatisfied Sicilians while settling in Naples and by distributing strongholds to French. The March 30th 1282, the day of Easter, of the riots, the Sicilian Vespers, caused by taxes excessive and exploited by Pierre III of Aragon and Michel VIII Paleologist, caused the massacre of the French of Sicily then the conquest of the island by Pierre III of Aragon.

The end of the Middle Ages is one crisis period for Sicily: the Black Death depopulates the area, the fights of the nobility create a negative climate. The Inquisition is founded in 1487.

Modern time

The Spanish period is marked by a relative decline of Sicily. The company is dominated by an aristocracy and a Church which have important privileges. Population of the south of

Contemporary time

For the revolutionary period, Sicily remains with the hands of the Bourbon Ferdinand III of Sicily (1759-1816), thanks to British protection whereas the French are installed in the south of the Italian peninsula. The attempts at reforms lead to the constitution of 1812 and the abolition of the feudal privileges. A lower middle class starts to be formed. But these efforts are destroyed by the return of the Bourbons which unified the two kingdoms and settled in Naples. Starting from this date, several movements of revolts against the policy reactionary of the Bourbons (refusal to institute a government Constitution nel) fail. In 1820, the revolutionists of Palermo ask for the autonomy of the island. The revolution of 1848 is agrarian and particularistic. After the unloading of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Sicily approves, on October 12th 1860, one very disputed plebiscite of annexation at the Piedmontese State - the vote is done under the threat of the occupying army and was not secret. The following year, on March 17th 1861, the Piedmontese State changed its name into Royaume of Italy and Sicily became part of Italy.

In Sicily and in the South of Italy a vast popular guerilla (the Brigantaggio ) of resistance against the Piedmontese one and the new Italian State, which lasted more than 10 years, gave place to a violent military repression carried out by the Italian army. It caused in the first years of the hundreds of civil thousands of deaths, of the thousands of deportees, the destruction of many villages, the economic collapse of all the areas of the South and an enormous wave of emigration without precedents in the history of the island, which carried million Sicilians abroad. Before the union with Italy, Sicily was one of the richest and developed areas of Italy. But after, Sicily and all the south of Italy were devastated, with the profit of North, where great industrial and urban parks were created. The historians locate the birth of the networks of Organized crime, starting from the end of the 19th century, its influence extended everywhere in the world. It was partially éradiquée by the fascistic mode of the end of the year 1920, but was reintroduced by the the United States at the time of the Second world war (release of Sicily by the forces américano-British between the July 10th and the August 16th 1943, during the Opération Husky).

Since 1946, Sicily is an autonomous region and profits from the land reform partial of 1950 - 1962 as of special subsidies coming from the Cassa per it the Mezzogiorno , funds of the Italian government for the areas of the South.

A Bridge suspended of 5300 meters between Sicily and the Italian peninsula was put in project unilaterally by the Italian government of right-hand side, the Pont of Messine (opening envisaged in 2010). The decision to build the bridge is very disputed by the political opposition of left, the greens, the movements sicilian anti-Maffia, and the sicilian independence movements. If it is carried out it will be the longest bridge of the world. Structurae

Sicilians in the history

Geography

Physical geography

The island is known since Antiquity for the volcano Etna.

Sicilian provinces

Inheritances of UNESCO

  • archaeological Zone of Agrigente - Page of UNESCO
  • Cities of the late baroque of the Valley di Noto (south-eastern of Sicily) Page of UNESCO
  • Roman Villa of Casale close to the town of Piazza Armerina in the center of the island Page of UNESCO
  • Wind Islands Page of UNESCO
  • Syracuse and the necropolis rock of Pantalica. Page of UNESCO
  • Masterpiece of the oral and immaterial inheritance of humanity:
  • the sicilian Puppet theater, Opera dei Pupi Page of UNESCO

High place

  • the fountain of Acadine
  • the Mount Éryx


Famous sicilians

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