Chapter 53
Autumn of the year 1071. Beginning of the season. (year 463 from Hegira). Fortresses of Syracuse
Nadira was not wrong when she told the poet Mus'ab that there are no Berbers, indigenous or Arabs in these parts, but only Sicilians who believe in the word of the Prophet. And indeed in two hundred years of Islamic rule the racial components belonging to this religion had amalgamated to the point of sharing the same Sicilian identity. Even more then the Saracens of Sicily, generally always divided and fighting each other, compacted themselves into a single people when the threat came from outside.
Temīm, the emir Zirida, had sent his sons to repel the Norman advance. He had done so believing that both the gēma of Balarm and the impregnable ibn al-Ḥawwās were waiting for nothing e
