И би велики помор Римљана: пад Таормине 902. и његов одјек у византијској екумени

The following paper deals with the fall of Taormina to the Arabs of emir Ibrāhīm II of Ifrīqīya in 902. The way in which this event was written about is noteworthy since we usually do not see such qualifications reading this kind of texts. We examine not only Byzantine histories and chronicles, but other narratives in Greek from Sicily and Southern Italy, how they wrote about these events and what kind of language did they use. We especially pay attention to the use of the ethnonyms Romans and Christians in these writings, uncovering a set of meanings and the salience of Byzantine identity, shifting from the Sicilian to the Constantinopolitan and general Byzantine perspective. Thus, a local version of the story of the Arab conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy echoes in other Byzantine narratives, where we see a distinction from the first texts that mentioned the fall of Taormina, and later authors who either preserved the initial narrative course of events or failed to do so.