The Gozitan milieu during the late middle ages and early modern times

Abstract

Giliberto Abbate's quantification of hearths in these islands shows that around the year 1241 the Gozitan population was about one-fifth that of Malta (Luttrell). It is also stated that of the total of 366 hearths only 203 were Christian; the rest were in their majority Muslim (155 hearths) and a few (8 hearths) were Jewish. The suppression of Islam in the Kingdom of Sicily at the hands of Frederick II between the date of this census and 1250, the year of his death, did not have the same devastating consequences for the Arabic speaking population on these islands as it had in Sicily, where the pockets of resistance, confined to such inaccessible strongholds as Castro Yanni, felt they could stand their ground, but were soon worn out and snuffed, and all opposition literally annihilated. It appears that the Saracens on these islands, probably because in a much weaker position due to the smallness of the place, reading the writing on the wall, opted wisely for a more accommodating stance and were consequently, in their majority, spared exile or worse. This must account for the survival of the language and of the Semitic anthroponyms here to this day, reflecting ethnic continuity with the Islamic period, in sharp contrast with the extinction of the same in Sicily. In the rapid process of Latinization and re-Christianization that followed, the various communities in the Maltese islands merged to form an increasingly homogeneous unit.