Palermo: The Farce of UNESCO's “Arab Churches” in Sicily

Written by Donato Didonna

I am not an art historian and so I apologize for any involuntary inaccuracies, but, in the face of silence from those who might have more expertise to speak than me, I feel duty-bound to denounce the historical mystification of the UNESCO World Heritage Site called “Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale” which contributes—in the collective imagination of citizens, tourists and guides—to consolidating the myth of an Arab Palermo to which they would like to attribute everything: from the Sicilian monuments of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, to the original recipe for Sicilian sponge cake (cassata), and even Sicilian semi-frozen dessert (granita).

I understand the political agenda of UNESCO in wanting to find a historical moment of peaceful coexistence between Christians, Jews and Muslims that could serve as an example for our day, but let it not be forgotten that a certain period of peace and tolerance in Sicily only came after the Arab domination—not during—under the Norman kings. Even in the recent case of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, UNESCO thought it wrong to manipulate history against the Israeli occupiers for the sake of contemporary political exigencies. Can we seriously promote peace and coexistence among peoples at the price of historical truth? I really do not think so.

For intellectual honesty it must therefore be reiterated that none of the monuments of the UNESCO World Heritage Site were built during Arab rule in Sicily, but were only built a century later, once Norman rule was established. The Normans wished to celebrate by having monuments built that synthesized—in an original architectural and artistic style—the various cultural influences on the island, beginning with Byzantine ones. The Church of San Cataldo, for example, with its characteristic red domes (in fact reconstructed in the nineteenth century) has never been a mosque, even if certain representatives of institutions publicly repeat this fairy tale. Much of that style which is commonly called “Arab” is nothing more than the oriental element of Byzantine architecture, not surprisingly born and raised in the Middle East in Byzantium (Constantinople, the modern Muslim Istanbul, which, except for the cisterns and little else, has eliminated every memory of Roman and Greek culture which formerly prevailed in that city).

The architectural style of the UNESCO Site is therefore primarily Romanesque, Byzantine and finally Arabian, but the latter is merely an artistic name for an architectural style; these structures were not actually built by Arab architects.

Prior to the year one thousand, the Arabs were not carriers of their own architecture, nomadic as they were; they were bearers of practical knowledge (e.g. irrigation systems), seeds, fruit plants (such as oranges) and other eastern vegetables, especially those derived from Persian civilization. They preserved Greek philosophical texts from the barbarians, they were expert navigators, scholars of geography and the stars, as well as mathematics, but the doctrines of the Quran dictated by Allah (and therefore absolutely dogmatic) has for centuries up until today led to the constant appeal to proselytizing holy war and inevitable problems with the scientific culture and civil rights that have been established over the centuries in the West.

Even the Italian edition of Wikipedia recognizes that:

“Arab-Norman architecture is an improper term, since the Arabs, nomads by origin and vocation, were never carriers of their own architecture, but assimilated the Middle Eastern and Neo-Hellenic culture of the Islamic countries during their expansion, elaborating various architectural syntheses, linked to the different empires: Fatimids, Zirids, Aghlabids, Abbasids, Almoravids, etc., which culminated in original typologies in Egypt, the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula. During the Norman period in Sicily and southern Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, these typologies were synchronized with Byzantine and Norman Romanesque art, giving rise to a flowering of buildings—masterpieces of the Siculo-Norman architectural school.”

Therefore, Siculo-Norman would be the most correct name for the UNESCO World Heritage Site...