William Granara is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He was awarded a Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship for his monograph Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World.

1 BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN

The Kalbids of Sicily

Muslim Sicily Unraveling

Born in Syracuse, Becoming a Poet

Education in an Early Jihadi Frontier

The Rise of an Indigenous Muslim-Sicilian Culture

Poetry in Muslim Sicily, From Philology to Art and Politics

Crafting a Poetics of ‘Homeland’

2 DILEMMA: TO REMAIN OR DEPART

Sojourn in Sfax: Maintaining the Ifriqiya-Sicily Connection

Asad ibn al-Furat: Muslim Sicily’s Founding Father

Ibn Hawqal’s Sicilian Chapter

In the Shadow of the Norman Conquest

3 THE FIRST DESERT CROSSING

Ifriqiya: A Divided and Turbulent Motherland

The Zirid Dynasty of Ifriqiya

The ‘Arabs’ of Eleventh-Century Ifriqiya

On the Desert Highway: Traveling with Arab Companions

4 LA DOLCE VITA IN SEVILLE

The ‘Abbadid Kingdom of Seville

Muslim Spain and Muslim Sicily: A Comparative View

Elegy to a Father

Serving the Patron: The Political Panegyric

Court Poet as Court Functionary

The Looming Threat of the Christian Reconquest

Poetic Sparring: Poet as Client, Poet as Competitor

5 FROM THE DARK CLOUDS OF AL-ZALLAQA TO A SECOND EXILE

Confrontation at Badajoz: Enter the Almoravids

The Battle of al-Zallaqa

The Fall of the ‘Abbadids of Seville

6 1091: ANNUS HORRIBILIS AND THE SECOND DESERT CROSSING

Intermission at Qal‘at Bani Hammad

Return to Mahdia

Connecting to the Zirids: Praise and Blame for Tamim

Vigilant Eye on the Norman Conquest

Ode to a Falling Homeland

Back to the Family in Sfax: Mourning the Loss of an Aunt and a Wife

7 THE POETICS OF JIHAD: AT THE ZIRID COURT IN MAHDIA

At the Court of Yahya ibn Tamim

Revolt and Murder at the Zirid Palace

Breaking Ranks in Gabes

From Seville to Nicotera and Mahdia: The Almoravids Move East

Victory at al-Dimas

The Almohads on the Horizon

8 TIME OF REFLECTION: ASCETIC VERSES AND ARABS AT THE NORMAN COURT

Retreat into Devotional Verse

Arabs and Muslim Culture at the Norman Court in Palermo

9 TWILIGHT: BLINDNESS, LOSS, AND DEFEAT

Losing Sight

Sicily Forever on the Mind

Elegy to a Nephew and Family History

Mourning a Daughter, Mourning a Homeland

Death and Burial

Ibn Hamdis’s Legacy in History and Literature