When Sicily fell under Islamic rule in the ninth century, this did not stop viticulture and winemaking on the island – on the contrary: analyzes of residues in amphorae suggest that wine exports from Sicily even flourished. Although alcohol consumption was forbidden under Islamic laws, wine was apparently still produced and traded, at least for export to Christian areas around the Mediterranean.
Wine was one of the luxury goods that were coveted in the Roman and Byzantine times and were accordingly intensively traded. Finds of amphorae in the entire Mediterranean area testify to this. Sicily was also one of the areas where wine was already being grown at that time. But when the Roman-Byzantine Empire lost power in the 7th to 9th centuries and Islam gained influence in the Middle East, Sicily also came under Islamic rule.
Amphora residues as contemporary witnesses
But what consequences did this have for wine production and the wine trade in this region? After all, alcohol consumption is forbidden in Islam. “Alcohol played and does not play an important role in the cultural life of Islamic society,” explains Martin Carver of the University of York. For this reason, historians have so far assumed that wine production and the wine trade must have decreased dramatically after the Islamic conquest of Sicily. Alternatively, the grapes grown could have been processed into juice or vinegar instead. So far, however, there has not been any clear evidence of this slump in the wine industry.
That is why archaeologists around Carver and his colleague Lea Drieu have now investigated this question more closely using amphorae from that time. These vessels have been used to transport and sell wine, oils and other goods since ancient times, and their site-specific design allows their origins to be traced. For their study, the scientists analyzed residues in 109 amphorae that were produced in Sicily between the 5th and 11th centuries or imported from Sicily in the Mediterranean region. Drieu and her team identified whether these amphorae once contained wine based on the ratio of tartaric acid and malic acid. The proportion of tartaric acid is higher in wine and wine vinegar than in grapes and other fruits.
Blooming export to Christian areas
The analyzes showed that not only the amphorae from the time before the Islamic conquest of Sicily contained wine residues, but also those from the following period. This suggests that wine was produced and traded in Sicily even under Islamic rule. Compared to the pre-Islamic period, the trade in wine even seems to have intensified in the 9th to 11th centuries, as the discovery of amphorae from Palermo that once contained wine suggests itself in Sardinia and Pisa. “Wine production not only flourished during this time, it was also an important economic factor and a basis for success,” explains Carver.
However, this does not mean that the wine produced in Sicily was also drunk by the Muslims living there and that they violated the Islamic alcohol ban: “The wine could have been produced and traded for the non-Islamic communities in Sicily and elsewhere”, explain the archaeologists. “We have found evidence that wine produced during the Kalbite rule was exported from Palermo to the Christian regions of the Mediterranean.” Other finds from this period provide evidence that trade relations between the Islamic and Christian worlds intensified at that time, and thus many Regions, including Sicily, brought a new era of prosperity.
Source: University of York; Technical article: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.2017983118