Water Communities in the Plain of Palermo. A Neglected Islamic Document from Norman Sicily

Abstract The Archivio Storico Diocesano di Palermo conserves a unique Arabic-Islamic document dating to 526/1132 that allows for insights into the legal practices of small-scale water management in the fertile countryside of Sicily’s capital city Palermo. Almost entirely neglected by previous scholarship, this article offers the first analysis of the document’s legal content and situates it within the wider context of Mālikī law, landscape engineering, and Muslim communal practices in medieval Sicily at a time when Latin-Christian elites came to dominate the possession of resources in Palermo’s hinterland.