The present monograph is based on the eighteen volumes of my The Jews in Sicily, Leiden-New York-Köln-Boston 1997-2010. It covers the thousand-odd years of Jewish presence in Sicily under pagans, Christians and Moslems. I collected the documents, over 40,000 of them, among the millions in the archives of Sicily and Spain, increasing manifold those published by my predecessors, chiefly the brothers Lagumina. Even so, nearly a lifetime of archival research and the aid of modern tools were insufficient to allow me the completion of the job. While I estimate that I covered the vast majority of records from among the documents originating in governmental and municipal sources, I had to make do without a large number of legal, chiefly notarial, records. They should serve further research, although I do not think that they are going to produce material changes into the historiography of the Jews in Sicily.
A fundamental defect mars this monograph, inherent in the chronological distribution of the documentary material. While the first volume of the The Jews in Sicily covers all (or most of) the surviving records of the first thousand years or so of Judaeo-Sicilian history, the other 17 volumes deal with the remaining two hundred and ten years. Furthermore, the first one hundred years of Aragonese rule furnished documentary material for two volumes, while the last century did the same for fifteen volumes. On the other hand, whereas there are great lacunae in the pre-Aragonese period, sometimes extending over an entire century and more, continuity during the Aragonese period is uninterrupted. That has to be borne in mind! The book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of chapters one to seven, and the second of chapters eight to 20. This is due mainly to practical reasons. Part one is the briefer of the two and the poorer in documentation, but covers a longer period. Part two is considerably longer and richer in documentation, but covers a much shorter period.
The history of the Jews in Sicily is essentially a material one. In that, it differs from those of many other mediaeval Jewish communities of similar dimensions. Towards the end, the Jews of the island numbered some 25,000, more than half of all Italian Jewry. The internal documentation of its communities has been lost, and little of its cultural and spiritual heritage (such as it was) has survived. It also lacks much of what has been described as the lachrymose history of the Jewish people (except for the short period before its extinction) and of scholars and men of letters, the pride of many another community. The few that there were, for the most part flourished outside Sicily, or were foreigners who spent some time on the island. Next to nothing is known of Jewish Sicilians in music or dancing, the arts and most sciences. The few exceptions in the arts, such as goldsmiths and perhaps a scribe or two, only prove the rule. In the sciences, the exceptions were mainly physicians, more numerous than in most other Jewish communities. Many of the doctors were scholars, rabbis and judges, leaders of their communities, and representatives in negotiations with the Crown. There were also a few astronomers and mathematicians. Most Sicilian Jews were artisans and craftsmen, merchants and labourers, including agricultural ones. In that they resembled and at times (probably) exceeded many Jewish communities in Mediterranean countries. Only relatively few were well-off or even rich, while most were poor. Hence this history is mainly an account of the life of ordinary people. The nature of the historical records available and their abundance chiefly for the Aragonese-Spanish period enabled me to describe, sometimes in great detail, the daily life and affairs of Sicilian Jewry during the period under review. This is largely due to my extensive exploitation of the notarial archives. Objections have been raised as to their value on the grounds that they were not truly representative of Sicilian life for one reason or another. Be that as it may, their usefulness far outweighs these doubts. In many ways, then, this is a departure from most existing histories of mediaeval Jewry.
