In his patronising letter (The Sunday Times, April 18) Godfrey Wettinger makes a string of gratuitous assertions.
Firstly, he continues to uphold Al-Himyari's total depopulation theory when he states that "there would have been plenty of archaeological evidence". Is he still oblivious to recent archaeological discoveries beneath Palazzo Xara, Mdina, which show that 'la frequentazione dell'area tra fine X e XI sec. è assicurata'? (Bruno and Cutajar, 2002). Is he unaware that our Museum of Archaeology holds a copper stamp [Obj. No. 23,000], found at Għeriexem, carrying the date 311 A.H. = c. 933 AD? Has not Al-Himyari now been superseded?
Secondly, he categorically asserts that the 'Pact of Old' must be the one of 1048, by which he means that the Christians surrounding their bishop found in 1127 were the great-grandchildren of their emancipated forefathers who, after 1091, had converted to Christianity.
Why should these descendants of ex-Muslim slaves have been better motivated to convert to Christianity than the other Muslims, descended from the former masters? The deal of 1048 was not about religion but about freedom and women!
The only motivation, common to both Muslim categories, would have been financial gain. But Muslims are not known to sway that easily from their religion and within such a short time. They were certainly not pressured by Count Roger, who actually defended them against their Maltese and Gozitan Christian neighbours and who actually employed them as soldiers in his armies.
Jeremy Johns, who studied the analogous situation in Sicily, finds no trace of proselytism among Muslims, and the only 'converts' were the former Greeks who had strayed from their religion and had begun to come back into the fold. But of course, I have already said all this in the book, and, as G.K. Chesterton comments in his The Everlasting Man, "Iconoclasts are not renowned for their impartiality".
Thirdly, he continues to insist on identifying Malta with Gozo as if they were one island. I can understand that. To admit that the two islands' vicissitudes were different after 870 AD is too hard to swallow. But is not Malaterra's account sufficient evidence that for Count Roger in 1091 they were not the same?
Of course, the hard evidence of a century later that Gozo and Malta were very different in the composition of their religious allegiances is simply ignored. Wettinger prefers to brush this very relevant information aside, at the stroke of a pen, scrapping it under what he chooses to refer to as 'frills'.
Among such 'frills' one finds the treatment of Giliberto Abate's report of c. 1241 which shows that by that year, the Christian population of Gozo constituted a staggering 56 per cent of the total, in contrast to the paltry corresponding figure of 16 per cent for Malta.
Another 'frill' is the solid evidence for a Greek church in these islands prior to its Latinisation. These raise questions that demand honest, professional answers.
The thesis of Tristia ex Melitogaudo does not stand or fall with a treatment of the dhimma-pact. It is the very logical conclusion from the convergence of all data, old and new, available to date.