SOURCES

The sources of these pages

The historical and documentary statements on these pages rest on the sources listed below, and where the sources are weak or discordant the page says so instead of choosing the more evocative version. Some incidental details remain without a precise reference; they carry no argument of the project and can be recognised because no conclusion rests on them.

Islamic and Norman Sicily

• — Michele Amari, Biblioteca arabo-sicula, Leipzig 1857, and Versione italiana, Turin-Rome 1880-1881. Reference corpus for the Arabic sources on the island, including Ibn Hawqal, al-Idrisi and Ibn Hamdis.
• — Ibn Jubayr, Viaggio in Sicilia, edited by Giovanna Calasso, Adelphi, Milan 2022.
• — Ihsan Abbas, al-Arab fi Siqilliya, for the text of the verses of Ibn Hamdis.

Al-Andalus and the Corral del Carbon

• — Leopoldo Torres Balbas, Las alhondigas hispanomusulmanas y el Corral del Carbon, in «Al-Andalus» 11 (1946), pp. 447-484.
• — Maria del Carmen Jimenez Roldan, Del funduq a la alhondiga: un espacio entre el emirato nazari y el reino de Granada, in «Al-Qantara» (CSIC, 2019).
• — Alicia Hernandez Robles, La pervivencia del funduq andalusi en las ciudades de Valencia, Murcia y Sevilla tras la conquista, in «Medievalismo» 31 (2021), pp. 235-271.
• — Fundacion Publica Andaluza El legado andalusi, Granada, whose seat is in the Corral del Carbon.
• — Fundacion Euroarabe de Altos Estudios, Granada.

Water, climate and techniques

• — Carmen Trillo San Jose, El agua en al-Andalus: teoria y aplicacion segun la cultura islamica, in «Tecnologia del Agua», April 2006.
• — Pietro Todaro, Giuseppe Barbera, Angelo Castrorao Barba, Giuseppe Bazan, Qanats and historical irrigated landscapes in Palermo’s suburban area (Sicily), in «Post-Classical Archaeologies» 10 (2020).
• — Pietro Todaro, Sistemi d’acqua tradizionali siciliani: qanat, ingruttati e pozzi allaccianti nella Piana di Palermo, in «Geologia dell’Ambiente» 4 (2014).
• — Ettore and Manfredi Saeli, La Camera dello Scirocco di Villa Naselli di Gela a Palermo (2022).
• — Giuseppe Caronia, La Zisa di Palermo. Storia e restauro, Laterza, Rome-Bari 1982.
• — Climate normals 1991-2021 for Ragusa and 1991-2020 for Fez.

Lexicon and rural architecture

• — Alberto Varvaro, Vocabolario Storico-Etimologico del Siciliano (VSES), 2014; Giorgio Piccitto and Giovanni Tropea, Vocabolario siciliano.
• — Roberto Sottile, Arabismi siciliani tra Oriente e Occidente.
• — Antonino Traina, Nuovo vocabolario siciliano-italiano, Palermo 1868, s.v. funnacaru.
• — Italian National Commission for UNESCO, L’arte dei muretti a secco, inscription 2018.

Arabic texts quoted

• — Al-Bukhari, Sahih, Kitab al-buyu’, no. 2072, on the work of one’s own hand.
• — Al-Sulami, Kitab al-futuwwa, part one.
• — Ibn Zaydun, from the qasida of al-Zahra’, in the reading al-labbat of the anthologies.
• — Ibn Hamdis, in the version attested in Yaqut and in al-Himyari.

In the pages the captions of these quotations give the author and the work and stop there. The qualification that applies to all of them is here: the vocalisation of the Arabic texts is reconstructed, it does not come from the sources that transmit them, and it awaits review by an Arabist. The two passages of al-Bukhari, 2072, are the exception, their vocalisation coming from the source. Ibn Jubayr and al-Idrisi appear only in Italian, because the Arabic text could not be verified.

What does not appear on these pages

Four claims that often circulate on these subjects were checked and discarded: that the daily temperature range of the Ragusa district is comparable to that of Fez, that the scirocco chambers date from the Islamic period, that the maiolica of Caltagirone is the Sicilian half of zellij, and that the ventilation system of the Zisa can be reconstructed in the details that circulate about it. None of them appears here.

Nor do quantitative measurements appear of the temperature reduction obtained from basins, sheets of water or Andalusian courtyards, because none is published by institutional sources.