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The Arabs had introduced sugar to Sicily by the tenth century and established sugar
mills. Although it may be true that the
initial Arab invaders brought sugar to the islands of the Mediterranean in the
eighth or ninth century, that claim is not based in fact; rather, it seems that
Arab agriculturalists cultivated sugar long after the initial invasions. There are few references to the cultivation
of sugar cane in Sicily, probably because the island was under Muslim rule
for a relatively short period (827 to 1091).
By the tenth century the sugar plant seems to have been grown around Palermo and perhaps elsewhere in large enough quantity to be
exported to North Africa. An anecdote
that has come down to us gives some insight into the export of Sicilian sugar
in the tenth century. Abū al-Fadl, a
celebrated orthodox jurist in the capital of Qairouan in North Africa (in today’s Tunisia) refused to eat a cake made with sugar which came
from Sicily because Sicily was then ruled by the Fatamids, a Muslim dynasty
originally from Egypt, who he considered apostates.
When the island was captured by the Normans in the late eleventh century the sugar industry still
existed but its fortunes began to fluctuate.
The Norman chronicler Hugo Falcandus (fl. late 12th century) makes
several references to sugar production in Sicily and describes not only the sugarcane plantations, but
also molasses cooking and sugar refining.
Important innovations in sugar production were found in Sicily, such as
the introduction of a new sugar press called the trappeto, which is
known to have been in use in 1449 in Ficarazzi, Sicily. There were sugar cane
mills in the twelfth century, and in the thirteenth century
King Frederick II restored sugar refineries in Palermo, after having to send
for experts in Lebanon, indicating that expertise had disappeared and the mills
must have been in ruin. The cane and sugar industry flourished in Sicily until
the late fifteenth century when, with the discovery of the New World, sugar
plantations moved across the Atlantic. The Sicilian sugar industry responded to foreign competition through technological innovation and survived until the late seventeenth century.
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