Ugo Mifsud Bonnici (The Sunday Times, March 14) recognises that "the 'pact' by which our ancestors were guaranteed the freedom to hold on to their Christianity by paying the giżya is a much more historically convincing way of explaining this continuity during the Arab occupation".
The 13th century Greek poem does mention a pact which was being abrogated in 1127. But this raises my perplexity. What was its original date and terms? Was it reached with the Arab invaders in 870 AD, when we are told expressly by Himyari in pretty few words that the Arab victors left Malta bereft of people except for a few who came over to collect honey, timber for shipbuilding and fish from the island's shores?
Stanley Fiorini thinks that the Malta mentioned in 870 did not include Gozo and that the people of Gozo were granted the status of dhimmi (p. lxvi). In fact, in 870 there was no room for such a pact.
The dhimmi type pact would have allowed them to have their own churches in which to practise their religion. They would not have had to wait several hundred years for the arrival of Count (soon to be King) Roger in 1127 to confiscate a number of mosques for conversion into churches.
Himyari also writes that in the year of the Hegira 440/1048 AD Malta was populated by the faithful, and that five years later they made a pact with the għabida, or slaves, by which the latter achieved equality with the free if they joined them in repelling an invasion by the Byzantines, and the free, or ħurra, would share their belongings with them and give them their daughters for wives (never done by Muslims except to fellow Muslims).
The Byzantines were repulsed and the pact came into force, the only known pact between the free and unfree in Malta in Muslim times. Here again there is no reason for the name Malta not to be applicable to Gozo.
The transaction is mentioned both by Himyari and al-Qazwini, the latter of whom we have known for more than a century. No conjectures are involved, though historians shall continue to speculate on the precise significance of this particular pact.
The status of għabida itself previously 'enjoyed' by the unfree was not exactly the one conferred by the dhimmi type of pact. And the status of equality then granted to them was far more than that normally given by the dhimmi type of pact.
It should also be remembered that in 1091 Count Roger invaded both Malta and Gozo, and though he freed numerous foreign Christian captives in Malta, local Christians here are not referred to at all with regard to toleration or political rights in the new pact which the local Muslim administration reached with him. In fact, it is conceded in this book, that Malta was completely Muslim in 1091.
The newly published poem in Byzantine Greek here published in the original Greek and English translation, clearly refers to a pact which the 'Christians' in Gozo could now disavow. But which pact was this, the never existing and conjectural one of 870, or the other recorded by Himyari and al-Qazwini which gave them equality?
Had it been the normal pact granting them the right to practise their Christian religion, why did they have to renounce it just when Gozo was being conquered by Count Roger's men? Malaterra expressly records that during his return to Sicily Count Roger landed his men on Gozo which they harried and plundered but there is no mention of Christians on Gozo, whether local men or foreign captives.
Could no one have informed them of their existence when they were ashore on Gozo itself enabling him to increase his renown by freeing them or taking them abroad as he had just done on Malta? Was it not Malaterra's particular task to write of his noble achievements? Instead they had to wait another 36 years for deliverance to come at the hands of his son.
The pact they had to renounce was obviously the one of ca. 1048 which had granted the għabida political and social equality but apparently not the religous toleration associated with the normal dhimmi type of pact. This explains why the ex-għabida were told they could marry the daughters of the previous free people who were undoubtedly Muslim.
It all now falls into place. The events of 1127 reveal that at least since ca. 1048 the people of Malta (and Gozo) had ceased to practise Christianity if they were in fact at all still Christians at that date.
They seem to have been satisfied with the pact reached with the hurra or free people in the middle of the 11th century. Equality was enough for them. Perhaps the individuals men-tioned in 1127 were merely still being hustled into another change of religion. In all probability, several of them could have belonged to families relatively recently converted to Islam?
Curiously enough I could not find any reference to Himyari and Al-Qazwini in the whole massive book. I'll have another look.