Prof. Stanley Fiorini (The Sunday Times, April 25) is now distancing himself from the theory of the dhimma-pact. He would have saved us much trouble had he never broached the idea which, after all, he imposed on the 12th century poem by not understanding the reference to "the Pact of Old", his reading and translation.
He now trusts on "the convergence of all data, old and new, available to date", to prove his point, that of the continuity of Christianity on Gozo, another point imposed on the poem, which only referred to Christians without saying where they came from.
I find it difficult to understand Fiorini's frame of mind because of what seems to me to be some confusion of facts. He apparently rejects the radical nature of what happened in Malta (including Gozo) in 870 AD because of recent archeological discoveries allegedly referring to people at Mdina at the end of the 10th century at the earliest.
As far as I know, no claims to the discovery of Christian remains have been made. He apparently believes that survivors of the catastrophe of 870 lived on.
Unaccountably, he believes I think, that the Christians surrounding their bishop found in 1127 "were the great-grandchildren of their emancipated forefathers who after 1091 had converted to Christianity", even though I made it clear that local Christians were not involved in what we know about the events of 1091, and he ignores what I stated quite clearly that the għabida of ca. 1048 were normally understood to be black mercenaries.
Fiorini also ignores completely the relevance of yet another Arab writer who has not been properly appreciated so far by our historians, namely Ibn Hauqal, who died after 977. Before historians knew of Al Himyari's shocking facts about what happened in 870 AD, they tended to discount Ibn Hauqal's description of contemporary Malta as a totally uninhabited island.
As far as I am concerned, the picture one has now is first that of a complete depopulation in 870, the only people occasionally present being those visiting the island for honey, fish or timber. Ibn Hauqal, three or more generations later, describes Malta as an uninhabited island, with visitors bringing their own provisions with them, rounding up the wild donkeys for which there was a demand on foreign markets, and hunting wild sheep.
We can perhaps add at least a further 50 years of incipient settlement of herdsmen who managed the sheepfolds or deyrs that arose in the next economic development, only documented so far by placename evidence.
Then, towards the middle and later years of the 11th century as well as during the 12th, occurred the widespread development of raħal centres of activity and habitation and the documented rebuilding of Mdina. Enclosed fields (galcae) were arranged close to the villages to make arable operations possible.
During this period, until 1127, all the settlers were Muslim, the free people being of normal Mediterranean stock, the mercenaries, of whom there was a large number, being of African origin. There could have been, for much of the time, a varying number of Christian captives of foreign origin, and mostly of Greek culture, also until 1127, similar to those that were set free by Count Roger in 1091.
In 1127, Count Roger II, soon to be crowned king, dispersed or killed in the fighting most of the sheikhs, descendants of the hurra of ca. 1048, and probably all the ghabida, thus abrogating the Pact of Old, and subjecting the remaining sheikhs and peasants to the status of inferiority reserved for them by the Norman regime.
Subsequently Maltese poets writing in classical Arabic are found languishing in exile in Sicily, and on Gozo we have a Sicilian Greek poet wasting nine years of his life remonstrating against his forced incarceration on the little island surrounded by a Muslim population.
Incidentally, Al Himyari himself tells us that Malta was an island south of Sicily 30 miles in length, thus indicating clearly that he was following the Byzantine tradition of taking Malta, Gozo and Comino as one place under that name.