Normans capture Palermo
1072
After a siege of several months, Robert Guiscard and Roger de Hauteville took the Sicilian capital from its Kalbid emirs. Palermo, one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean, with five hundred thousand people and a skyline of minarets, became the jewel of a strange new Norman-Arab-Greek kingdom. The conquerors retained the existing Arabic bureaucracy, a pragmatic decision that made Sicily uniquely cosmopolitan among Christian realms.
In context
Also in 1072 (3 other events on record)
- Shen Kuo Begins Astronomical Observations for the Song Court · East Asia · Science
- Death of Ly Thanh Tong, Builder of Dai Viet · Southeast Asia · Politics
- Death of Alp Arslan · Central Asia · Politics
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in War
Era
High Middle Ages (1000–1300), one of 1,306 events from that era on Saeculum.
Sources