Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia), officially the Sicilian Region, is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea and one of the twenty regions of Italy, situated south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe. With over 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea. Sicil Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia), officially the Sicilian Region, is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea and one of the twenty regions of Italy, situated south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe. With over 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea. Sicily's namesake is the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. Sicily has a rich and unique culture in arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,403 m (11,165 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. It is separated from Calabria by the Strait of Messina. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is considered part of southern Italy. The earliest archaeological record of human activity on the island dates to around 14,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and around twelve Greek colonies along its coasts, becoming one of the centers of Magna Graecia. The Sicilian Wars of 580–265 BC were fought between the Carthaginians and Greeks, and the Punic Wars of 264–146 BC were fought between Rome and Carthage. The Roman province of Sicilia ended with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily. The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the The Sicilian Wars of 580–265 BC were fought between the Carthaginians and Greeks, and the Punic Wars of 264–146 BC were fought between Rome and Carthage. The Roman province of Sicilia ended with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily. The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the County of Sicily in 1071, which was succeeded by the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. Politics on the island became intertwined with those of Greece; Syracuse became desired by the Athenians who set out on the Sicilian Expedition (415–413 BC) during the Peloponnesian War. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth as allies and, as a result, defeated the Athenian expedition. The victors destroyed the Athenian army and their ships, selling most of the survivors into slavery. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse controlled most of eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the western side. The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars (between 580 and 265 BC). Roman rule introduced the Latin language to the island, which underwent a slow process of latinisation but Sicilian culture remained largely Greek and the Greek language did not become extinct on the island, facilitating its re-hellenisation much later under the Byzantines. The prosperity of the island went into sharp decline during the governorship of Verres (73 to 71 BC). In 70 BC, the noted statesman Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem. Various groups used the island as a power base at different times: slave insurgents occupied it during the First (135−132 BC) and Second (104−100 BC) Servile Wars. It took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be conquered; the largest city, Syracuse, held out until 878 and the Greek city of Taormina fell in 902. It was not until 965 that all of Sicily was conquered by the Arabs. In the 11th-century Byzantine armies carried out a partial reconquest of the island under George Maniakes, but it was their Norman mercenaries who would eventually complete the island's reconquest at the end of the century. === Arab period (827–1091) === The language spoken in Sicily under Arab rule was Siculo-Arabic and Arabic influence is present in some Sicilian words today. Laws were issued in the language of the community to whom they were addressed in Norman Sicily, at the time when the culture was still heavily Arab and Greek. Governance was by rule of law which promoted justice. Muslims, Jews, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards, and Normans worked together fairly amicably. During this time many extraordinary buildings were constructed. However this situation changed as the Normans imported immigrants from Normandy, England, Lombardy, Piedmont, Provence and Campania to secure the island. Linguistically, the island shifted from being one-third Greek- and two-thirds Arabic-speaking at the time of the Norman conquest to becoming fully Latinised. In terms of religion the island became completely Roman Catholic (bearing in mind that until 1054 the Churches owing allegiance to the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople belonged to one Church); Sicily before the Norman conquest was under the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch. After Pope Innocent III made him Papal Legate in Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale; includes a series of nine civil and religious structures dating from the era of the Norman kingdom of Sicily (1130–1194) ==== Tentative UNESCO World Heritage sites ==== Taormina and Isola Bella Motya and Libeo Island: The Phoenician-Punic Civilisation in Italy Scala dei Turchi Strait of Messina === Archaeological sites === Because many different cultures settled, dominated or invaded the island, Sicily has a huge variety of archaeological sites. Also, some of the most notable and best preserved temples and other structures of the Greek world are located in Sicily.

dialects may not have lingered on ; but Greek and Arabic were the two written tongues of Sicily when the Normans came. The Sicilian Saracens were hindered

THE SUN SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 3 1911 VF SKW BOOK iwiimi MeMr Lover of Sicily and intending visitors to that lovely ilnd will welcome Miss CECILIA WAMI Mrdiarval Sirie I P Duttnn Ami Company i The book is pro fusely i llut rut I and contain a useful bibliography The eataoomlMi of Syracuse with the interest inft underground church of San Mar mil bear witness to the fact that Koman Christianity had struck root in the island by the middle of the fourth century and we know from oontemorary miter that a Root many monasteries wore founded in the rourae of the aiith lentury bjt Gregory the reat In the eighth century these religious oom munitie at said to have rivalled those of Rome itself in wealth memltershtp and leamuiK several Sicilian monks becoming loe in Home Of this per sistent Infinity nothing tangible now re mains unless indeed the interesting and unexplore I centre of the island shall pro vide archaeological surprint in that direc tion Gonetoo areiUI the larger churches built for or adapted to the Kastern Rile during the two centuries or o of Byzau tuie tul The island was conquered poli tically in 3o eccleaiastically alotit 7SS

Persons who have never visited Malta usually fail to realize that Maltese 'works' as a normal language. This is because most islands in the Mediterranean, speak a dialect or a local variety of the language spoken in the nearest large nation state: in Majorca and Minorca they speak Spanish, in Corsica some speak the patois but most speak only French, their official language, in Pantelleria they speak Sicilian and, write Italian, in Jerba they speak Arabic, in Crete Greek and in Cyprus Greek or Turkish. The 400,000 inhabitants of Malta and Gozo, living in an area of just 316 sq km, nowadays se Maltese, English and Italian regularly, and their exposure to these three languages unavoidably determines a degree of intermingling. Because of its situation at the centre of the Mediterranean, Malta is not only exposed to the four winds and to strong sea currents, it is also swept by the prevailing cultural trends, today as in the past. The use of three languages in Malta is attested as far back as the early Roman period (from 218 to the first century BC), by inscriptions in Punic, Greek and Latin, and again during the post-Norman period, when documents were written in Latin and/ or chancery Sicilian, while Maltese continued to be spoken. This is the only variety of Maghreb Arabic that survived from the Muslim expansion into Spain and Sicily, where it died out in the fifteenth and the thirteenth centuries respectively, while Pantelleria kept it at least up to the seventeenth century. Du

architect, poet and composer. Frederick also reportedly spoke six languages: Latin, Sicilian, Middle High German, Old French, Greek, and Arabic. As an avid Frederick II (Italian: Federico, Sicilian: Fidiricu, German: Friedrich, Latin: Fridericus; 26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220, and King of Jerusalem from 1225 to 1228. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI, of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (the second son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa), and Queen Co Fred… In the Kingdom of Sicily and much of Italy, Frederick built upon the work of his Norman predecessors and forged an early absolutist state bound together by an efficient secular bureaucracy. He was known by the appellation Stupor mundi ('Wonder of the World') and maintains a reputation as a Renaissance man avant la lettre and polymath: a visionary statesman, an inspired naturalist, scholar, mathematician, architect, poet and composer. Frederick also reportedly spoke six languages: Latin, Sicilian, Middle High German, Old French, Greek, and Arabic. As an avid patron of science and the arts, he played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. This name, a masculine form of his mother's name, served to identify him closely with both his Norman heritage and his imperial heritage (through Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor). It was still his name at the time of his election as King of the Romans. He was only given his grandfathers' names, becoming Frederick Roger (or Roger Frederick), at his baptism when he was two years old. This dual name served the same purpose as Constantine: emphasising his dual heritage. Frederick's birth was accompanied by gossip and rumour on account of his mother's advanced age. He thus ruled Sicily until 1202, when he was succeeded by another German captain, William of Capparone, who kept Frederick under his control in the royal palace of Palermo until 1206. Frederick was subsequently placed under the supervision of his tutor Walter of Palearia until he was declared of age in 1208. At that time, he spoke five languages: Greek, Arabic, Latin, Provençal and Sicilian. His first task upon coming of age was to reassert his power over Sicily and southern Italy, where local barons and adventurers had usurped most of the authority. Pope Innocent was in search of a diplomatic match for his protege Frederick to enable successful alliances for him in the future. After Innocent’s death in 1216 and the succession of the new pope, Honorius III, Frederick secured the election of his eldest son, Henry, as King of the Romans after careful negotiations with the German princes in 1220. In so doing, he successfully outmaneuvered the papacy whose constant fear was encirclement between imperial Italy and the Sicilian kingdom, all unified under a single emperor. By a cunning sleight of hand, Frederick had managed to retain his grip on his territories in southern Italy as de jure regent for his son while Henry remained in Germany as its junior king. Frederick also reestablished the Sicilian navy with provisions based on older Norman laws whereby certain fief holders, including cities and towns of the realm, were bound to furnish timbers or money for shipbuilding and provide for the maintenance of the fleet. These laws were brought into full force again, while Frederick erected new state wharves. By the end of 1221, the emperor already had two squadrons at sea. In the course of Frederick's reign, the Sicilian fleet again became a formidable force in the Mediterranean, rivalled only by those of the maritime republics. Contemporary accounts also described an intellectual environment that combined Roman legal traditions, Arabic philosophy, Byzantine administrative influences, and the emerging literary culture of the Italian peninsula. In this way, the court of Frederick was perhaps the last great blossoming of the remarkable Norman-Sicilian cultural synthesis. === Henry's Revolt === While Frederick may have temporarily made his peace with the pope and cultivated his authority in southern Italy, the situation in Germany was becoming problematic. How long will this deception last?" The question of Frederick’s personal attitude to religion, whether he was a conventional Christian or privately more deistic, perhaps even atheistic, remains a persistent topic of debate. == Literature and science == Frederick had a great thirst for knowledge and learning. Frederick employed Jews from Sicily, who had migrated there from the Holy Land, to translate Greek and Arabic works. He also introduced paper into a European court. He played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His Sicilian royal court in Palermo saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. Through the mix of Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Sicilian language poems and art at the court, Arabic "muwashshahat" or "girdle poems" influenced the birth of the sonnet. The language developed by Giacomo da Lentini and Pier delle Vigne in the Sicilian School of Poetry gathering around Frederick II in the first half of the thirteenth century had a decisive influence on Dante Alighieri and then on the development of Italian language itself. Dante even regarded Frederick as the father of Italian poetry. The school and its poetry were saluted by Dante and his peers and predate by at least a century the use of the Tuscan idiom as the elite literary language of Italy. It is claimed he was seeking to discover what language would have been imparted unto Adam and Eve by God. Salimbene alleged that Frederick bade "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their