The Ruby In Her Navel

If one had the misfortune to be born in the 12th century, then Sicily was the place to be. The Normans had conquered the island, finding it effectively divided in two, inhabited partly by Arabs, partly by Greeks. From the outset, they had given both these communities major responsibility in the government. As well as Latin and Norman French, Greek and Arabic were official languages of the developing state; and when in 1130 that state became a kingdom under Roger II, it was already an example to all Europe of cultural and religious toleration. The chief minister and head of the all-important navy was always a Greek (our word admiral derives through Norman Sicily from the Arab title of emir), while the treasury was entrusted to Arabs, whose mathematics were better than anyone else's. Roger himself was as unlike a Norman knight as it is possible to be. Brought up in Palermo by an Italian mother in a world of Greek and Muslim tutors, he was a southerner – indeed, an oriental – throug...

Author: Unsworth Barry
Genre: Historical fiction
Number of pages: 428
Reading time: 7 h. 8 min.
Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF
Language: english
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