AHC/PC/WI survival of the muslim Sicily.

The real problem with Kalbid Sicily is that it has all the problems of Al-Andalus but is smaller and doesn't have a manpower pool.

Al-Andalus survived as long as it did because the locals could always draw upon mercenaries from the Maghreb as hired muscle, even if the hired muscle eventually took over and kept the Iberian territories around as the northern province in a greater Berber Empire after a certain point. Sicily couldn't do that. Sicily also has the problem that the Umayyads tried to staunch by declaring a Caliphate: The ruler of Sicily is always just an emir appointed by someone else, whether by the Aghlabids or the Fatimids, and as such doesn't really have much weight behind his authority in the absence of a bigger power. The island remained most solidly within the Muslim sphere during the period when the island was subject to a strong power with its centre in Ifriqiya - that is, Tunisia. The nature of the western Islamic states - in which an Islamized ruling class sits on top of a vast and surly underclass of dhimmi and a few native conversos whom they do not want to empower - ensured that, unless Sicily survived long enough to somehow convert most of the island to Islam and undergo a big shu'ubiyya revolt which somehow put power in the hands of Islamized Sicilians who could then form their own army, Sicily was always going to be under the thumb of whomever controlled Ifriqiya. This worked fine until 973, even once the Fatimids came in; the Fatimids actually had a large navy based in Ifriqiya, where their seat of power was, and they could just nip across the Med and reinforce their Sicilian proxies.

Then the Fatimids moved the capital to Egypt. The navy went with it. From 973 on, the Sicilians were basically hung out to dry.

Probably what you would need for Sicily to survive is to ensure a strong, persistent power centred in Ifriqiya, which can hold Sicily as a proxy kingdom - that could be a Fatimid empire which doesn't expand into Egypt, or it could be some other Berber empire which gains control of Ifriqiya and figures out what a boat is. It's less likely with the Zirids, who themselves are proxies of the Fatimids; at that point, Sicily is a proxy of a proxy, and bound to fracture.

The manpower problem can be solved like Al Andalus did. Bring up the Berber Tribes. It does bring the same problems the Umayyads faced after Almanzors death but the Islands gets more Islamic and harder target to conquer. Sicily had to deal with the East Romans until the 1040s. Which they dealt with (mostly due to incompetent emperors ,but still).

You are right about something though. The Island is smaller than Al Andalus. It needs either a strong Navy or a North African Power willing to back them up.
 
An example of working out estimates: Palermo under the Arabs had a population of 50,000+; rule of thumb is an urban to rural ratio 5-10/100; suggesting 500 thousand to one million living in the countryside of northern and western Sicily.
That's not a good rule for outliers, Italy's urbanization reached on average 15%(late middle ages) even and Islamic Sicily probably even higher(numbers in some tables in the file below):
http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Papers/THE_ECONOMIC_CONSEQUENCES.doc.pdf

There were at two more cities with populations over 20,000 - again the multiples suggest perhaps another 1 million. Low ball it, and say perhaps as few a 1-1.5 million in total on the island. Still, that makes them not that much a minor player.
1 million is credible, 1.5 as a peak figure is possible as well, but it's already getting pretty big without having urban populations fed mostly by outside sources factoring in.

Going a bit further back, using Imperial census data that has survived, suggests a population for Sicily and Sardinia (they were generally lumped together) of around 500 thousand to 1 million in 14 CE
Quoting: "The Italian population was 7 million at the death of the emperor Augustus; after a decline from the 2nd/3rd century, it regained momentum in the 10th, reaching 11 million in 1300 {12.5 million is gaining as more likely}, 13.5 million in 1700 and 18 million in 1800. It attained 26 million in 1861."
Population growth prior to the 19th century is filled with remarkable ups and downs with a real shallow exponential curve.
I'm curious if the population during Augustus was really just 7 million, especially with peak population figures for Rome reaching 1 million or even 1.5 million.
If we have the same population growth for Sicily as we had in Italy it would mean we would have 800k-1.6m, removing Sardinia would give us actually not terribly inaccurate or unrealistic numbers.

In any case the problem is that we are talking about a population of still mostly Latin Christians directly connected with the Christian world.
In the short term there needs to be some external support as even with 1.5 million people its resources are easily matched by any solid mainland Southern Italian state.
 
The manpower problem can be solved like Al Andalus did. Bring up the Berber Tribes. It does bring the same problems the Umayyads faced after Almanzors death but the Islands gets more Islamic and harder target to conquer. Sicily had to deal with the East Romans until the 1040s. Which they dealt with (mostly due to incompetent emperors ,but still).

You are right about something though. The Island is smaller than Al Andalus. It needs either a strong Navy or a North African Power willing to back them up.
The manpower issue is just one thing Muslim Sicily would have to solve, though.

The frontier Islamic states tended to have some similar problems. The manpower problem does not solve the problem of political weakness: The ruler of Sicily is just a viceroy appointed by whomever rules from Ifriqiya, and the Kalbids aren't a family with a claim to the Caliphate. They're always just someone else's man on the spot. That puts you in a position where whomever rules the island is always just a colonial governor with no native manpower pool to pull from, with the closest tribes typically subject to whomever controls Ifriqiya - and the result is what you got OTL: Infighting and weak leadership at the top. Al-Andalus and the Maghreb is a bit different because there was a bigger range of clans to hire from - and at times the Umayyads were the ones who clientized the Berbers, as was the case with the Maghrawa Confederacy. With Sicily, what they usually end up with is one big power controlling Ifriqiya.

The other major problem is the structural issues - both with these states' economies and with their internal leadership. Al-Andalus and Sicily were both set up with economies reliant on producing cash crops like sugarcane, citrus fruit and cotton. That worked fine so long as you had bustling trade networks and willing buyers. But it makes it harder for them to become self-sufficient. The structure of leadership also makes it difficult: Traditionally, Arabs and Arabo-Berbers in the frontier emirates were a very small upper class, and it took centuries for the natives to begin to convert to Islam in decent numbers. Even then, the ruling class would typically choose not to use the natives militarily or grant them much by way of privileges, preferring to use hired mercenaries. You end up with a small ruling class using hired muscle to run a cash crop operation.

Can these problems be overcome? Sure. But Sicily's problem is that it got a later start than Al-Andalus, is significantly smaller, is much more vulnerable and has fewer things it can use as a crutch. Even moreso than Al-Andalus, Sicily has a tiny, tiny margin for error. Even a North African supporting power is tough: A very powerful Fatimid empire will inevitably be tempted by the riches of Egypt as compared to the relatively poorer Ifriqiya, and other empire options didn't have much of a maritime tradition. Sicily really needs to be a province of an Ifriqiya-centred, navy-equipped Berber empire for a few centuries, basically.

Butterflying the Normans won't necessarily save anything; if you assume the rise of Italian maritime trade, cities like Genoa and Pisa are going to start eyeing Sicily simply because it's big, it's rich and it's in the middle of their trade routes.
 
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