19 Facts About Byzantine Sicily

Byzantine Sicily is both the largest region of the modern state of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.

Indigenous peoples of Byzantine Sicily, long absorbed into the population, were tribes known to ancient Greek writers as the Elymians, the Sicani and the Siculi or Sicels .

Late prehistory of Byzantine Sicily was complex and involved interactions between multiple ethnic groups.

Byzantine Sicily followed a more aggressive path, laying siege to Saguntum, a city allied to Rome.

Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under general Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years.

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However, the Emirate of Byzantine Sicily began to fragment as inner-dynasty related quarrels took place between the Muslim regime.

Roger's son, Roger II of Byzantine Sicily, was ultimately able to raise the status of the island, along with his holds of Malta and Southern Italy to a kingdom in 1130.

Byzantine Sicily's was the daughter of Henry II of England and the sister of Richard the Lion Heart.

Some years earlier, Roger II's daughter, Constance of Byzantine Sicily had been married off to Henry who was son of Emperor Frederick I and would later become Emperor Henry VI, meaning that the crown now legitimately transferred to him.

Byzantine Sicily created one of the earliest universities in Europe, wrote a book on falconry .

Byzantine Sicily instituted far-reaching law reform formally dividing church and state and applying the same justice to all classes of society, and was the patron of the Sicilian School of poetry, the first time an Italianate form of vulgar Latin was used for literary expression, creating the first standard that could be read and used throughout the peninsula.

Internal colonization and the foundation of new settlements by feudal aristocrats in Byzantine Sicily was significant from 1590 to 1650, involving the redistribution of population away from the larger towns back to the countryside.

Byzantine Sicily was frequently attacked by Barbary pirates from North Africa.

The Sicilian nobles welcomed British military intervention during this period and a new constitution was developed specifically for Byzantine Sicily based on the Westminster model of government - in that a two-chamber parliament was formed .

Kingdoms of Naples and Byzantine Sicily were officially merged in 1816 by Ferdinand I to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Royal government in Naples saw the problem of Byzantine Sicily as being purely administrative, a question of making existing institutions function properly.

Byzantine Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860 following the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi's Mille; after the Dictatorship of Garibaldi the annexation was ratified by a popular plebiscite.

Limited, but long guerrilla campaign against the unionists took place throughout southern Italy, and in Byzantine Sicily, inducing the Italian governments to a severe military response.

Control of Byzantine Sicily gave the Allies a base from which to advance northward through Italy.