405. Norman Conquest: Medieval Mafia Invade The East (Part 5)

They are best known for invading England in 1066, but the Normans conquered territories in the East too. Who was Robert The Weasel, and did he operate like a Mafia boss in the 11th century? How did the Normans thuggishly conquer Sicily and Southern Italy? How did the Normans influence the iconic architecture still visible in Palermo today? In Episode 5 of this series, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by Peter Frankopan, author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East, to discuss the Norman Conquest to the East. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Charlie Rodwell Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:39Speaker 03

  Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arndt.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  And me, William Derrimple. And joining us for this pod is our old friend, Peter Frankopan, who was on one of the very first episodes of this pod two years ago now. Since then, he's published an astonishing book on climate change. He is already the professor of Global History at Oxford, the author of The Silk Roads. But in the next two episodes, we're going to be taking him back to all the stuff he did at the beginning of his career and where he first made his name. And particularly, looking in the next episode at his first book, The First Crusade: The Call from the East, which completely changed for many of us the way that we looked at the Normans, looking at them in a sense from

• 2:24Speaker 04

  the point of view of Constantinople, rather than from Rouen and Normandy. And this is what we hope to do in these next two episodes.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Well, we hope to do it. But can I just clarify something before we go on? Peter, are you going to tell us off in this podcast? Because the last time you were on, you are my mother's favorite guest on Empire. She absolutely adored it because you kicked our butts around the playground last time you were on. And she was there going, ah, he's so fun. This is great. This is what they deserve.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Finally, my Anita put in her place.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Marvelous, marvelous. So when we think about the Normans, we think about, obviously, the Bay of Tapestry. But you can stand in the Eastern Mediterranean and chart their arrival in the Eastern Mediterranean, which to many people is just going to be a mind-blowing aspect. That you've got the family of minor Norman nobles who end up as the most sophisticated rulers in Christendom before they came to that part of the world. You know, tell us a little bit about Sicily. Who was in charge? Who was running the place before the Normans wash up?

• 3:28Speaker 05

  I love that they're still put in their place, that they're minor Norman nobles, that whatever they can achieve after building cathedrals, massive states that spread across the Mediterranean, they've got to be put in their place as upstarts. I mean, what do you have to do to get a break in the medieval world? I mean, the Normans appear in Southern Italy around about the, when the second decade of the 11th century, so sort of about 1015, 1016, something like that. And they appear in Southern Italy as pilgrims, but above all, they come as, where Normans always appear, they come as thugs. They're hired help that are very valuable to, for local potentates, barons and lords to settle scores with each other. And that's a very good business model. People

• 4:11Speaker 05

  pay you, whether you win or lose. And better still, the more violence there is, the more you're in demand. So Normans start to appear in greater numbers. And the 1030s and 40s, they do what any group from outside would do, which is, we're very familiar with in the modern world, we tend to call them things like the mafia or criminal gangs. They start to build up their own network where, rather than offering their services to other people, they start to fill their own boots. And they start to translate military power and violence into political power and into very significant wealth. And so what starts as a kind of hired help turns into parasites who then overwhelm and overrun exactly the areas we're talking

• 4:56Speaker 05

  about. So Southern Italy, Apulia and Calabria, and eventually Sicily. That's pretty much what they do in Normandy. And that's pretty much what they do in Britain, too. It's a very good business model.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Peter, tell us what's going on in South Italy and in Sicily, just as they're arriving. And also the dates. This is just before, they're arriving just before the Battle of Hastings. This is not subsequent. This is a little bit earlier.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  In the parts of the world we're talking about, the Battle of Hastings has somewhere around zero meaning. It's not the most important thing in the Norman world. That happens probably in the Mediterranean, even in 1066. So Britain, much though I don't want to rain on the parade of the Bay of Tapestry, nor on the illustrious history of the Normans in Britain and the sort of the raising of the North and the massive amounts of violence they unleash here, the wealth and the connections across Europe are centered to the South and to the East. And when the Normans come to Southern Italy, they're stepping into a world of a patchwork of city-states, places like Salerno, Amalfi, Benevento, Capua, where there are

• 6:01Speaker 05

  rival dynasties that have sort of hinterlands around their cities that make them quite rich, but not very rich. And that gives them plenty to want to fight about. Further south of that, you've got a complex world that had been part, this has all been part of the Roman Empire. My friends, the Byzantines of the Eastern Roman Empire, this is essentially the Roman Empire, Sentinel Constantinople, sees the southern part of Italy and Sicily as its own backyard because it's the laws, languages, neighborhood that connects to Rome and to Constantinople. And they've had to deal with a previous generation or two of incursions, which are from North Africa, who are Muslim raiders, who take over Sicily, take over Apulia and Calabria, and eventually pushed out by, amongst others, the great

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Basil the Great, one of the great names in history, Basil the Bulgarslayer, his nickname because of so many Bulgarians that he killed. And that reasserts imperial control in Southern Italy. So the Normans have an eye on what that might mean for them. If they can get involved in the little states on the shin of Italy around Naples, then maybe there's going to be greater opportunities. And Sicily is the big prize because Sicily is the wheel on which Mediterranean history has always turned. And so there's an opportunity to see whether they can translate their punching weight in Southern Italy into something more substantial. But the first challenge is, how can they build a platform for themselves in Apulia and Calabria?

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Peter, when we were doing our episodes on the Bay of Tapestry and on Hastings, the big sort of USP of the Normans in military terms is their horses, their lances, their shields. They are the kind of crack cavalry force of their day. Is that also the case when they're in the South Italy? Have they got something that no one else has got that's leading them to be able to carve out this territory?

• 7:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, I think people get very overexcited about chainmail and armor. So hello, Anita's mum.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  These are like, these are like tanks. So they're great. If you've got, if you've got an enemy in front of you, they're devastating. The cavalry charge and the cavalry techniques that Norman knights have and Western cavalry have are sensational. And when we get to talking about the East, the Near East, Jerusalem, then they're even decisive. But, you know, when you've got tanks that aren't being used, they're a complete pain in the ass. Horses require a lot of pasture land. They require training. They require grazing. They're not cheap. And so they're great if you're in battle. But when you're wandering around, what I suppose, in their sort of, when they're off games and they're not busy fighting, I suppose they're a bit like very expensive pimped up cars that you sometimes see around

• 8:47Speaker 05

  the streets of London or Abu Dhabi or Dubai. You know, these are the status symbols that the kind of young, rich thug turns up in to show you who's boss. They're symbols of your masculinity, they're statements of, you know, chivalry if you're a poet. But to most of the people who, you know, these guys are turning up like thugs with tattoos all over themselves.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  And you know what? I have to say, I mean, look, I just called them minor Normans. You've gone through my thugs on pimped up horses. Tell us about Robert Juscard. I mean, tell us, where does he come from? What is he like? What do we know about him?

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Well, you don't need me to tell you anything. The clue's in the name. I mean, it means Robert the Weasel.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  He sounds dreamy. Yeah, go on.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  He's the wrong side of the tracks, drug baron. That would be the way of thinking about him. Okay, so he is a man who we know from the literary sources, when he wants to get money that's not paid to him, he gets the person who owns him the debt and personally pulls out his fingernails, right, to show what crossing him looks like. And he becomes the master of Puglia. He becomes decisive in the politics, not just of the city-states of the sort of of the western flank of Italy, but he becomes very important in the politics of Rome. He becomes important in the politics also of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople. So in 1059, he's able to build himself a big enough a platform that he does for anybody who's

• 10:16Speaker 05

  managed to make people bow down and cower in front of him. I guess if you've watched Peaky Blinders and Tommy Shelby, he's a kind of closer to home example of that.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Brilliant. That gives me a whole new Robert Schisca from anything I've ever thought of before.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he says, right, guys, right, now what I want is I want a title. So he gets granted in 1059 the title of the Duke of Apulia. And being granted the dukedom of Puglia in Constantinople, people think, right, well, look, maybe rather than waste money going to fight against him, let's do the more progressive and smart thing. Let's see if we can arrange a marriage alliance. He's a bit rough around the edges. He can't really read and write very well. He's a bit thuggish, but give him time. In two or three generations, no one will call him a minor Norman nobleman, apart from Anita 2000 years later. There's a way of bringing these guys on side, and that is quite an effective technique. It's a standard way of trying to work out that you can't fight against the rising tide,

• 11:14Speaker 05

  and that's what the Normans look like. And so there's an attempt at marriage alliance. Robert is one of those men, I think, as I hopefully have painted the picture already, for whom enough is not enough. So he wants to keep on going. And so he with his brother Roger start to look at Calabria first of all, and then at Sicily. So the first Norman expeditions across into Sicily in the early 1060s. By 1072, Palermo has fallen, and then it takes a bit of time to mop up all the people who think it might be the wrong way around. But what I mean by mafia, I don't mean to just relate it to kind of, you know, criminal gangs in the modern world. But this is how power works. This is how the East India Company works.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  This is how, as William knows, this is how the Napoleon works. This is how all structures work in very similar kinds of ways. And I think that the challenge with the Normans is to not over glamorise them, but also to understand that the role of the parasite of being able to take control of the whole body and to turn it towards your own will requires real determination, requires a specific set of skills. But it requires for you to be needing to build up your own networks that put yourself at the top. And in a way, I think that the kind of the Viking world, the world of heroin dealers of people trafficking, it's quite a useful model to think about the Normans

• 12:38Speaker 05

  because it's a familiar way in which small groups are able to build big networks and able to terrify the living daylights out of people into knowing what their place is.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  And like the Godfather, you know, you sort of have the heavy lifting done by the first generation. And I can just say how much I love that Roger and Robert, the terrible twins, who go and sort of wreak havoc everywhere. They're like the boys in the local pub. But then it is it is son of Roger, Roger the Second, who ends up with this, you know, respectability and is crowned in 1130.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  So when Roger dies, I mean, he's quite interesting. So during the first crusade, he gets asked whether he'd like to take part as the kind of Western Europe starts to rise. And Roger famously, according to one Arab writer, listens to the pleas of the envoys who are sent him to ask whether he'd like to send military help. He lifts up his one leg, emits a very loud fart, and then says, that's what I think of this proposed mission. Because it's bad for business. War is a good thing if you're using it to take over assets and to take power. If you're going to interrupt trade, that's bad for everybody. And again, plenty of modern examples that can show that war involves miscalculation, wastage of expenses, and interrupts the flows of traffic, leads to inflation, makes people poorer.

• 13:55Speaker 05

  Roger understands that as a business model, so doesn't refuses to take part. His son has a slightly different view on life. Roger the Second is able to become king of Sicily in 1130. There's something called the coronation mantle that's now in Vienna, that is a beautiful robe that, you know, you think of high table in Oxford in spades, you know, where what do you want to look like if you're the boss? And of course, it's velvet, it's gold, it's fabric, it's, you know, it's bling. And it's stitched in the insides of this amazing textiles are Arabic inscriptions. There's a way in which you can read this as being connected to the silks of the East and to textiles,

• 14:36Speaker 05

  but also to the milieu that is Christian, it's Islamic, it's Jewish, Sicily attracts all sorts. And Roger sits on top of a very diverse island group. When the Second Crusade comes around in the 1140s, and again, you see you see the great leaders of Europe at that time, Louis of France and Conrad, the Emperor of Germany, head off east to go and show their faith. Roger reckons this offers a better opportunity, which is to use it to attack the western coast of the Byzantine Empire in what's now Corfu and Epirus. And then to figure out that that's a good moment to think about how he could boost his kingdom. So he sends a detachment to go and kidnap, and that really is kidnap,

• 15:19Speaker 05

  the textile workers and the silk workers of Thebes and Corinth to bring them back to Sicily so they can sit in his textile factories. So it's a business model. That's what this all looks like. And Roger, he has the face of a lion, which is, you know, quite a nice thing, but he has a raspy, harsh voice. He's not one of those people you want to write a negative biography about because all men like this from deep experience have quite short fuses. So you'll find lots of people talking about what an idyllic and wonderful ruler he is. And but you want to be careful talking for too long at a dinner party, and you'll definitely want to laugh at all of his jokes. But at the same time, he is a patron of the arts because he understands that the symbols matter.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  So he invests in monasteries, he invests in the Capella Palatina, which I'm sure you'll have seen this, you know, inside his palace in Palermo, where he depicts himself alongside Christ Pantocrata with scenes from the Bible in the Greek Orthodox style with gold, and it's wonderful. But Roger is a man who does things his own way. So most churches will show the saints and will show Jesus Christ and the crucifixion. Roger says, right, well, I have a bit of that, but let's also have some people getting pissed. Let's have some dancers. Let's have some people going hunting to show that, you know, I enjoy this stuff. And you can imagine the Archbishop in the cathedral thinking, are you absolutely sure? That sounds like a good, wouldn't you like a bit more St. Peter or?

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Gosh, I wish I thought of that, Roger. I mean, fantastic. A tiny bit more Jesus. I don't know. Is that all right?

• 16:50Speaker 05

  But this is the birth of Sicily into something that is often, again, through the rose-tinted glasses, is seen as being a kind of golden age of tolerance, and the reality is never quite that simple.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Okay, but as far as sort of tolerances comes out, do we know that, you know, the thought is that he embraces other faiths, you know? If he knows about a Muslim doctor or a Muslim astrologer, he will kind of embrace them and envelop them into his court and give them lavish livelihoods.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think if anybody listening to this podcast is a member of a high-profile criminal gang and was keen to do a live broadcast with Anita and William, I probably might do it remotely. You'll find a very similar response, which is, I don't really care what you do in your spare time or which god you worship, pay me my money. And that's what this is really about. So the Normans are not huge in number as they as like in like as when they come to Britain and England and beyond. And so they're quite pragmatic. So they leave institutions in place. They leave the people who know what they're doing. They let them get on with it. They tell them to tighten up margins. They keep the coinage, for example. The tari is the standard Islamic coinage of this time.

• 18:02Speaker 05

  And they'll fiddle around with it. So they'll put they'll leave it in with Arabic inscriptions on one side, dating with the Hijri, with the sort of the data of Muhammad's pilgrimage to Mecca on it. But then they'll put their own logos on the other side, and quite often they'll do that in Greek to show that, look, we don't mean any harm. And by the way, you're familiar with that because of the Greek language that's been used in the Roman Empire for the previous 300 years. It's a bit complicated. We'll get on to that a lot of time, why that's the case. But they understand, like any good business person would do, whether it's illicit or not, that the business won't just take care of itself. You need to have institutions. You need to have ordinances. You need to have tax collection. You need to have threats. You have to punish people who get things wrong.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  And so the bureaucracy flows from the fact that you need to have a centralised system, and the Norman world is one where there's one person who matters, and that's the boss at the top. So again, we can we think about this as a sort of happy hippie, everybody holds hands. You can be Muslim, I can be Jewish, you could be Christian, I don't really mind. But Sicily in the kind of middle of the 1100s is a military and political, I wouldn't say superpower, that's probably too far, but it's a place that people think twice about how they should embrace. And that field of vision doesn't stop expanding. We have a book called the Tabula Rogeriana, or the Book of Roger, I guess, which doesn't sound quite as glamorous today.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  I'm glad you said it. I was thinking it.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  This book of Roger is a kind of, it's a blueprint of what the world looks like. So it's put together by Al Idrisi, who is one of the great geographers, cartographers of his time. We think that there's a massive silver version of this that exists at some point, as well as a book that has lots of 17 maps or so, and explains how the world works, explains what's where, how people are connected. And that, in the hands of a geographer, looks like a nice guide to tell you how the world functions. In the hands of a ruler, not just a Norman, it looks like who's next on the menu. And, and the Norman challenge is, is how from Sicily, where's the value in expanding your business model? How can you make yourself richer? And also, how can you make sure that you're going to keep yourself defended

• 20:18Speaker 05

  from any potential rivals that might turn up next door? And the Normans are uniquely good at doing that. I mean, the Norman conquest of 1066 in Britain is the last time that Britain gets invaded with a sort of quick shout out to our Dutch listeners in the 1680s. But, you know, it's definitive. And that shows that there's real thought that goes into maximizing what the, what the grip on somebody's private parts looks like. The Normans are very, very good at doing that, because these things, they don't get built by mistake.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Peter, just before we go to the break, how much are these very exotic figures with their Capella Palatinas and their Muslim notaries and all the rest of it, and Ibn Jubayr and Benjamin of Toledo, and all these very exotic names? How much are these guys in touch with our familiar friends in the Tower of London? And I mean, is it the same world? Do they recognise that they're cousins to each other?

• 21:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, just, just explain to me what you mean by exotic, because I'm not quite sure what that's, I mean, in the hands of an English, or in the hand of a Scot, they sound exotic. But I mean, they don't sound exotic to anybody else. I mean, so I think it's in the eye of the beholder, the exoticism. I mean, the Normans have an idea that they're part of a, of a wider network of winners.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  That's what I want to focus on. So how, how much are they all intermarrying with their cousins in Yorkshire, for example? Is that going on? Or are these people now down in the south, a completely different world, in connect, much more interested in what's going on in the eastern Mediterranean?

• 21:45Speaker 05

  I think if you're in the, if you're in the, if you're in the Mediterranean, the appeals of the moors of Yorkshire are reasonably distant. So there's an understanding within this world that there are connectivities, not just seeing the Normans as being something separate and unique. There's great deal of interest in what's going on in the parts of the world, and who is being successful. I mean, the interface is really south, north to south, Normans in, and people in the British Isles are thinking about what's happening in the Mediterranean, and beyond, much more than people are thinking the other way. And that's because of trade, that's because of business, that's because of power. And so this world, which, you know, I would definitely push back on any ideas that these people have exotic names, or it's all sort of very distant, that that's what it looks like if you have the privilege of being in Britain, but not, not if you're in part of the soup

• 22:29Speaker 05

  of the, of this world of power.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  We are going to go to a break. Can I just say, Mum, he's doing it again. And second of all.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  I'd be very polite.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  We were literally in therapy last time.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  I can tell why you didn't get me back for years. Yeah, there we go. I'll, I'll hear from you in 2035.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  But just before we go to the break, I mean, just in, in a nutshell, would the, the Normans that we're talking about, Roger and his lineage, look at the Normans of Britain and think, oh, poor, poorer cousins. Hope they're doing fine. I hope they don't visit, never want to visit them. I mean, is that the kind of relationship that you're painting?

• 23:07Speaker 05

  No, I think that that first generation in the 10, from 1015 or so, until 1040, 50, there are lots of connections, familial and marriage wise, that those, of course, peter out. I mean, we're now already about 150 years onwards. So it's, it's a bit like saying to someone, where are you really from in today's world? You know, do you, do you know, but your ancestors can't really be from this world. I think that the Appalachian Norman doesn't always get used in the way that we think that it does. You know, when you've got royal and imperial power, you use it, and you're thinking about tomorrow rather than about yesterday. So it's great to get historians involved in all of this. People like Geoffrey Malatara, William of Apulia, all my great friends whose works I love reading. But that, you know, people are thinking about what comes next. They think about their

• 23:52Speaker 05

  personal legacies, rather than where do they come from?

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Well, we're going to take a break now. Join us after the break, where we continue talking to Peter Farakhan. Wish us luck.

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• 25:25Speaker 04

  The king has many Muslim doctors and astrologers who he covets and takes great care of, to such an extent that when he becomes aware of a Muslim doctor or astrologer travelling through his land, he grants him such a lavish livelihood that he forgets of his home. His ministers and chaperones are generally Muslim eunuchs, of whom he has a huge troupe. They form the court elite. From them shines the splendor of his kingdom because of their magnificent clothing and swift horses. And there is none among them who do not have their own retinue and slaves and attendants. Around him, the king, has many slave girls, and no Christian king is given more to luxury nor greater comfort. In immersing himself

• 26:08Speaker 04

  in the pleasures of the land, in the formation of laws, in the establishment of procedures, and in the majesty of his realm, he resembles the rulers of Muslims.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  So that is by the Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  I was enjoying the solemnity with which William was reading. What I was thinking, as he got to the end of that, I thought if I was Ibn Jubayr, it's like, it's my Substack, where's my money?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:33Speaker 05

  Pay me for writing this stuff. And it's, it's beautifully crafted. So you read it quickly, and it goes, look, it's a fantastically wealthy place, full of tolerance, magnificent clothing.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Quite exotic, if I may say so.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Don't do that. Shh. Don't do that again. What are you doing?

• 26:49Speaker 05

  Anything south of Dover is exotic. Yeah, I understand that. But what he's actually saying is, these guys are blinged up, he's got a lot of slave girls, which is not a particular, you know, even in the 12th century, not everybody thought that that was great. No Christian king is more given to luxury nor greater comfort. That's great if you're trying to think of somebody's wealthy, but it's also somebody who is overindulged. I mean, think of our great tech titans and their unlimited wealth. That's not great. And in fact, the kicker is the final line where he says, in the majesty of his realm, he says, he resembles the rulers of Muslims. So he says, you can't take, land a punch on, on Roger by saying that he's somehow indolent, because that's what all of our rulers back home look like. So it's, it's all, all of this has double edged swords to it.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  But where, where is back home for Ibn Jubayr? I mean, I want to know, I'm fascinated. I want to know a bit more about him and how he sort of ends up in, in the Norman mercenary court.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  So he's from Andalusia and goes to Mecca on pilgrimage in the 1180s, comes back and, and enjoys his time in Sicily. He, he presents a picture of tolerance, of everybody being able to get along with each other, the king saying, look, I don't care what god you worship, I'm just here to, for everybody to have a great time. And by the way, I've got my slave girls and my fancy threads to wear, and I don't mean any trouble to anybody. In fact, what he also says, if you read the, if you read it, the bits that get quoted less, is that he gets people coming up to him in the streets and says, we have to conceal our faith. He gets people who says, look, there's no scarcity of goods and wealth

• 28:22Speaker 05

  if you're rich and you're connected, but not if you're not. And, and there's a, there's an uneasy tension underneath all of this. The presentation of a world that is open and meritocratic has some truth to it, no question, particularly if you can compare it to other parts of the world, you know, persecutions of Jews in, in.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  Medieval England, yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. So there's some of that. But the fact that the king is just fantastic and amazing, Ibn Jubayr is also writing about this to signal back to the rulers in, in Granada and Cordoba and in, in Muslim Spain, to say, this is what ideal rulership looks like. You should put all that stuff behind you. You need to be inclusive. You need to be open minded. And in fact, he makes a big thing, Ibn Jubayr, saying that, you know, the ruler is personally very kind to him. He meets him in person. And that has a kind of, obviously, a resonance for Sicily. But he's writing this for an audience back home to say, maybe that bit where you're aloof and whatever, is something you should learn from.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Now, you said that already in the 12th century, people are not thrilled by the idea of harems full of slave girls. And there are in fact, full denunciations of Roger from the north, aren't there? People like Bernard of Lavo calls him, is it he who calls him the baptized Sultan? I mean, there's people are distinctly edgy in the north about what's going on and the fact that there's, that there's, there is this court that looks so very unfamiliar to them.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're edgy about that. They're also edgy about the fact that, um, in Sicily, the Normans don't do what anybody tells them. You know, they're not taking orders from anybody. So Bernard can write as many annoyed letters as he likes. Uh, but he's also not part of the mainstream, you know, but Bernard is hugely important. He's one of the great galvanizers of the Second Crusade, you know, has a very strong faith, as you probably guess, he's, he becomes a saint. In fact, um, and so for him, seeing the idea of accommodation where Muslims are, are walking around in the streets and women in the Norman world are dressed. As, as Imogen B says, as Muslim women, as they go about their business, uh, it's very threatening. So there's a bit of the kind of, uh, weirdo right wing about Bernard and others, which is that, that anybody who's

• 30:25Speaker 05

  unusual and who is accommodating and dealing with our notional enemies, uh, needs to be censured. And in fact, when we talk about the Crusades, you get a lot of that too, that, that the new arrivals who pitch up in places like Jerusalem. Uh, first thing they do is they go, right, where are they? Let me go and kill them. And everyone sort of shrugs and sighs and thinks, well, just give it a few months, son, and you'll work out that we don't get to eat unless we can deal with our local neighbors. And you can still have a different perspective on life, uh, while, while, while having a different faith. So the Normans, it's a kind of, it's a melting pot that's unusual because the Muslim population of France, where Bernard comes from, is, is very small.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  If not, I mean negligible, uh, you won't find, uh, many Muslims walking around in the British Isles at this time. And so that idea of cosmopolitanism, it's not just Sicily that's threatening. So too is Constantinople. So, so too is the, the Near East when the Crusaders get there. So there's a bit of, there's a bit of sort of just mealy mouthness of people, of people like Bernard.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, you're, you're, you're making Bernard sound like disgruntled from Tunbridge Wells, with, you know, and having that much of an, of an impact on it, you know?

• 31:29Speaker 05

  Well, he, I'll tell you what, he, he loses his shit at the end of the Second Crusade. He goes bananas when he finds out that the Byzantine emperors don't just drop everything and, you know, could do more. And so, so this is a very judgmental world where it's, it's easy to think that other people are exotic, for choice of a better word. And in fact, it's, it's very easy and it's very easy to orientalize that. That's what this is all about. It's the idea that, that other communities don't look like us and that, that, that's a threat.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  But what I'm really, um, enchanted by is that by Roger the second and beyond, you know, this is, this is run like a, a multinational company where you get the best talents from everywhere. I mean, for example, Ron, Roger's Inner Circle. It's pretty amazing. You've got George of Antioch, who's a Greek Christian from Syria, who has a good CV, you know, he's come with a CV. He's, he's served Muslim rulers in, in Tunisia. He's, you know, and he's running the fleet, he's running the treasury. He is, he is surrounding himself by people of talent.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  George is great. He's cool. His, his, his job title, uh, as top, as his final point of his CV is amiratus amiraturum, which means admiral of all the admirals. So they don't do things by half, right? It's like, I'm not just the boss, I'm the boss of the bosses. And of course, that's where the word admiral comes from, from Amir, from, uh, which is a, so, so the Sicilians who use all the Normans.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a, it's a Muslim title, yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 05

  No, it's not. It's an Arabic title. Uh, I think, but the, the point is that, that these guys like George, who's from a Greek Orthodox background, uh, has a strong connection with Antioch, which is one of the great patriarchal cities of the East, one of the most important cities in Christendom, finds that there are jobs for him in, in Norman Sicily and you know, the, the Normans are, are very, very shrewd. They are classic talent spotters. They are looking for people who are good at what they do. And if you're good at what you do and you're loyal and you don't shoot your mouth off when you're drunk and start complaining or lampooning the boss, then there's a place for you. And, and that speaks, I think, to,

• 33:25Speaker 05

  um, like you said, Anita, it's a business model, but it, it, it starts to dress itself up with all the apparatus that all states then have of, of chapels, of cathedrals, of mosaics, of, of, of titles. And in a way, what you can see with the Normans is how all states function like that. So take me back to, if we did a podcast on, on ancient Rome, take it, take us back to the great early courts of the Middle Ages in, in India before, before you get to royal courts that start to really emerge at a regional level. It's the same process that happens with all of these. And, and I think that that pathology is very, the Normans, it's great because it's the kind of, it's the perfect corpse. I mean, when I was an undergraduate,

• 34:04Speaker 05

  the medics got given, get, give, introduced to dead body to, to teach them how to be doctors. And the Normans in Sicily are the fantastic example of how, what are we looking at? How does this stuff actually work? And you could be dazzled by Constantinople, you could be dazzled by the Tower of London and kind of bypass some of those questions about how, how does power function? How's it, how does it want to be represented? And, and who's good at it? And, and as we get towards the end of the line here, part of the problem is that the Normans have done one thing that gangs are not always good at doing, which is succession planning. So they reached the end of the line in Norman Sicily because they haven't thought about succession planning. And again, people who have studied business histories will know that that's a kind of classic way of where things go wrong. You haven't thought about who comes after Steve Jobs or after Tim Cook.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  Because you think it's such an exalted position and it's difficult to find someone powerful enough to unite everybody.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  But I sort of, I just still don't think I quite have my head around whether, you know, they would feel Normans or would they feel Sicilian or would they feel like this is a new thing that we've created and we're in charge?

• 35:04Speaker 05

  I think they wouldn't think, ask the question unless they were asked on a, on a, uh, global podcast.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  On a podcast by two morons.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  No, no, not morons. I, I think in, in the same way, it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't cross your mind to say, I'm Roman. It's just self evident that that's what you are. And so I, I think that there is a, the, the Norman roots of the kingdom are clear, but you know, from, from a, from a, from, from Norman Sicily towards the end of 1100s, you know, you're playing on a much, much bigger canvas than the, than the windswept fields of northern, northern France or even the British Isles. So that of course there's a connection and that, that Norman heritage is important. And in fact, the, but the bit that would be recognizable would be the administrative structures. What the Normans who come across to British Isles bring with them are Mediterranean laws, tax structures, cadastres. I mean, the, the doomsday book is a classic Byzantine Roman imperial textbook.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  And so it's the, it's the Normans in the north who are more interested in connecting themselves back south. So, so for example, when you, well, and it's a very good question, Anita, about whether they think of themselves Normans. It's the same thing, you know, would you say, would, does William the Conqueror think of himself as Scandinavian? You know, like I said, it, it's about today and tomorrow rather than yesterday. So if you've got him in a good mood and said, how'd you feel coming from the fjords? Or from, you know, does that, do you ever think about where you really come from? Uh, you, you'd probably have a, a mild sense of humour failure first. If you went, but it's about the history. He'd say, that gets done, I'll pay someone to go and write that. I'm just generally not interested.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  The, the extraordinary range of folk who are part of this court, whether they're from Antioch or whether they're people in charge of the treasury who are from Fatimid, Egypt and so on. This multiculturalism, if you want to call it that, this multi ethnicity and multi-religious nature is always said to be summed up by the Capella Palatina. We mentioned it very briefly in passing in the first half. But take us there now. Describe to me what you see when you walk into the, uh, the chapel in the palace in Palermo. Uh, does it look anything like, like, uh, Durham Cathedral, which is how we think of Norman architecture in Britain? Or is it completely different?

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Well, we think about our, in the British Isles, uh, of our big cathedrals being dark. Um, and, and that's a function of, of, uh, our friend, Henry the eighth, some of that. It's also a function of availability of materials and of craftsmen. A, a lot of this is to do with a sort of circuit within the Mediterranean of people of very good artisans, um, who are able to, to do stuff to order and the cathedral in Monreale, the Capella Palatina are, are examples of what wealth looks like, but also what outstanding craftsmen. So you can pay for whatever you like. I mean, Durham is absolutely jaw dropping as a cathedral. That shows that the stone masonry, the architects, the engineers are able to build something so spectacular. I mean, it's,

• 37:56Speaker 05

  it's completely breathtaking. And I suppose if it was all lit up with gold, um, you, you, you'd be even more so, but it's to do with the milieu of the Mediterranean. So the Normans get the credit for the fact that they're stepping into a world that, that, well, people know what to do. They know how to make these things.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  I'm sure many people have been on holiday to Palermo and gone to the Capella Palatina. But for those who haven't seen it, it's in many ways the equal of the Alhambra or the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Uh, you walk into this, this extraordinary chapel, you look up and it is an Islamic ceiling with the stalactite murkhanas that you might expect to see in a mosque. You look in front of you and you have these extraordinary mosaics that look like something you'd expect to see in Constantinople. Um, there are, uh, round Norman arches of, of the sort, it's a distant cousin of what you might see in a, in a Norman church in, uh, in Normandy or in, uh, or in, uh, a, a Cistercian monastery.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  But the light is something just dazzling and, and anyone that hasn't seen this should go there. There's this exquisitely carved and painted gilt honeycomb, which still explodes like a supernova of Islamic starbursts with the light of the candles flickering below. And upstairs in the palace, you've got these gilt mosaics showing paired heraldic leopards, padding, soft footed under fruit trees, centaurs prancing among palms and cypresses, lions stalking antlered stags, peacocks climbing through vine scrolls. It, it's just one of the most incredible things. When I had my wedding. Anniversary. I so love this world that I bought Olivia a little ring from this world that I

• 39:38Speaker 04

  found in London. And it's got this this same mixture of sort of Islamic and and particularly Byzantine in it.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Does I mean, does this also spread to the outside? I mean, you have sort of the the pleasure gardens and the fountains and, you know, that sort of layout that we associate with the Arab world.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  We talked about Ibn Jubayr earlier and Benjamin of Toledo, and they have these extraordinary descriptions. Just to read out for a second what Benjamin of Toledo says about exactly that. He comes through in 1170, and he talks about the king taking trips on the palace lake in boats clad with gold and silver with his women. He talks about Islamic style pleasure gardens inherited from the Calbed Emirs, bred leopards and hawks and menageries with giraffes and elephants and camels and lions, lynxes, apes, bears, peacocks, ostriches, a lake stocked with amazing fish, and beyond a hunting park with fallow deer, roe deer, and a wild boar.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it it sounds kind of cool, actually.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  I don't know, Anita. I mean, look, I do it slightly differently, as you know, with my medieval hat on. Number one, it sounds like somebody didn't know what they wanted. So you go, just give me everything, right? Second, I don't think we would talk about Elon Musk's house like this. If we are, oh, my God, and if you clap, the lights come on, and he's got fountains here and.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Do you think it's too gauche? Do you think it's trying too hard? Is that what you're saying?

• 41:00Speaker 05

  I think it's I think, look, it's it's a statement of extreme wealth, right? And therefore of extreme centralization of power, and therefore the social structures that sit underneath that about what the roles are for women, what the roles are for barons, and what the roles are for the for the poor.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  Oh, you've put me off it now. You've completely put me off now.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  It is absolutely breathtaking.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  No, no, you've ruined it for me. Don't say that. I don't care now. That's fine. Just ruined it.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  But the centaurs and the leopards or whatever, it's overwhelmingly beautiful. But I think at the time.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  No, no, too late for that. Ruined.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  Elon Musk's pleasure palace.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  I think at the at the time, people would have turned up and thought, my God, this looks naff.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Peter, one last story, please indulge me. You mentioned the coins. And from my Golden Road, this is this is a story which I got very excited about, because this is the first time that the Indian number system, which starts off at the time of Ashoka in northern India, has made its way through Abbasid Baghdad to the southern shores of the Mediterranean. And I think this is right in saying that the the Indo-Arabic numerals, the same numerals we use today, the first time they appear, rather than the old Latin ones of, you know,

• 42:23Speaker 04

  XV, MC, XV I, and all that sort of stuff, is on an 1138 coin minted in Rogers Court in Palermo. Is that right?

• 42:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, people don't. I mean, people don't use Latin numerals like that. In fact, they use Greek alphabet, algebraic letters of alpha, beta, gamma, delta to indicate dates. There are other number new number systems that don't have how we think of the Romans, where you go, we were writing the, you know, the year 1878, and it goes on for sort of half a page. There are all sorts of ways in which complex mathematics is being done beforehand. But clearly, what the what the key is, is things that are simple and can be interpreted by multiple different eyes makes things easier. And so, again, the multilingualism of Sicily is not just about making everybody feel happy. It's also the cause of least resistance. So if you've got people who want to buy and sell things, if you want them to obey their laws, you've got

• 43:17Speaker 05

  to do those in ways in which people understand. So in that sense, it's a bit like Ashoka putting up pillars that are in in Greek and Aramaic and Sanskrit. It's a way of saying, I don't really care who you are, you clowns. Here are the rules. So I think to some extent, the the use of of standardized coinage systems, of simplifications, both of laws, but of also of lettering, of numbering, it's about making life easy for people. Because if if life is easy for people and they understand what they're doing, then then the wheels will turn efficiently. So I think with with this with this stuff, it's more to do with how do you reduce barriers? How do you make the oil and the motor run? And the Normans are fantastically good at doing

• 43:58Speaker 05

  that in Sicily, as they are in Britain. And that's why Norman, the Normans really build Britain into what it is. It's a decisive break, not just from the Anglo-Saxon world, which of course is well run, as you'll have spoken about, but it's about working out how do you put, how do you supercharge something that already does quite well into something that's going to be more ambitious? And and the Normans, the lack of frontiers of their ambitions is what makes them stand out as being unusual in this period.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  One one last link between that these two worlds. On Roger's death, his principal treasurer, who's an Englishman called Thomas Brown, goes back to England and serves as an officer in Henry the Second's exchequer. And he tries to introduce the the Indo-Arabic numerals here. I was interested. It doesn't take off at all. So again, there are links between these worlds still.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  But what that means is that is that what what is already there works very well. You don't need to simplify. Everyone knows what they're doing. So you don't need to, you don't make any better. If something works, it's not broken. You don't need to fix it. It's about it's about where you're trading with. It's about who you're connecting with, where your cultural influences are based, but also what what is next? What's your next ambition? What's your next frontier? And the Normans are always thinking about what comes next.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Peter, that's fantastic. We'd love you to come back in the next episode and jump over to the eastern Mediterranean, because the Normans are not happy with just stopping at the incredibly rich kingdom that they've created in Sicily. They're going next for Antioch.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  And goodbye from me, William Durham.