I don’t usually do reprints but here is an interesting 2014 article from the Times of Malta about potential Suavic presence on the island. Given that Evagrius’ Life of Saint Pancratius of Taormina was written between 695 and 710 and refers to Slavic villages on Sicily, the presence of Slavs on Malta in the 11th century – over 300 years later should not be that surprising. Still, it is an interesting report/conjecture so here you go:
“The Maltese may also have a drop or two of Slavic blood coursing through our veins, according to an eminent American medievalist from the University of California.
The presence of Slav or other white slaves was documented in the name Ta’ Skorba, which is derived from saqaliba/slaves.
Delivering a lecture in fluent Maltese, Michael Cooperson, a professor of Arabic and a translator of Arabic literature, argued that the much-debated identity of the slaves in 11th century Malta – from whom the present Maltese population is supposedly descended from – was Slavic.
The longest discussion of Malta in those times is in a 15th century book by the North African geographer al-Himyari. In 1995, the book was translated by Manwel Mifsud and written about by Joseph Brincat.
Prof. Cooperson explained that al-Himyari wrote that Malta was attacked by Arabs in the ninth century and then left deserted.
‘This means that the Christian continuity back to St Paul was broken. Then, says al-Himyari, the Arabs came back in the mid-11th century and resettled the island.’
Malta was then attacked by the Byzantines. Reportedly, the Muslims and their slaves (referred to as għabid) fought them off.
Modern scholars have been pounding away at the slaves: were they Christians who survived the first attack?
A number of scholars have concluded that the slaves were not Christian.
Godfrey Wettinger had observed that għabid were normally understood to be black mercenaries. However this interpretation would involve having to account for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable black population.
Prof. Wettinger also proposed that the Maltese slaves could have been .the Saqaliba or Slav or other white slaves..
Ggeographer al-Bakri who also gave a shorter but older description of Malta than that of al-Himyari used the word għabid to refer to Slavs.
‘If we assume that the Maltese slaves were Slavs as well, we would be solving the problem raised by Prof. Wettinger, i.e. ‘to account for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable Negro population’.
More details in Times of Malta and the e-paper on timesofmalta.com Premium.
Here is the professor’s comment:
Slavic origins
I am grateful for the attention Times of Malta gave to my recent talk but the shortened, non-subscription version of the article available online has created some misunderstandings.
My talk was about the medieval Arab geographer al-Himyari, who reports that 11th-century Malta was inhabited by Muslims and their slaves (għabid). Some scholars think these slaves are the ancestors of the present-day Maltese people. I doubt this is entirely true but the question does not interest me.
My purpose in the paper was to find out what al-Himyari meant by the word għabid. I was trying to solve a textual problem, not a genetic one.
What I found was that another Arabic geographer describes a similar group of slaves as saqalibah. In the Middle Ages, this term was linked to Slavs but also to northern and eastern Europeans in general.
Regarding Malta, this discovery means that 11th century slaves may have been saqalibah too. This possibility seems consistent with the results of genetic analysis. The Muslim societies of the medieval Mediterranean, including those of Sicily and Southern Italy, also included slaves of European origin.
Some commentators tried to approach the problem linguistically. But similarities between Maltese and Arabic (for example) do not necessarily tell us anything about where their speakers come from. Historical linguistics actually works the other way around.
If we find a Catalan word in Maltese, we can assume that at some point speakers of Maltese came into contact with speakers of Catalan. But we cannot assume anything about the ancestry of either group.
In the case of Malta, 11th century slaves may have come from different places. If their only common language was the Arabic of their masters, their own languages would have disappeared very quickly. Possibly for this reason, the only trace of the saqalibah in modern Maltese is the name Ta’ Skorba or Sqalba. If saqaliba did exist in Malta, they doubtless contributed something to the gene pool. But this does not mean “the Maltese may have descended from Slavs”.
I too noticed the parallel with the Eurovision song contest and the Polish entry ‘We are Slavic’. Although that performance deserves further study, I can assure everyone that it did not influence my conclusions.”
Here is a follow up article
Academics at odds over Slav slaves theory
The presence of “Saqaliba or Slav or other white slaves” was documented in the nameTa’Skorba, which is derived from sqalba (slaves).
Defining the identity of 11th century slaves in Malta as Slavic may solve the problem of accounting for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable black population but raises another issue, according to historian Godfrey Wettinger.
‘I am now faced with the problem of explaining the innumerable blacks that were wiped out by Count Roger II in 1127.’
Prof. Wettinger was reacting to the conclusions drawn by eminent American medievalist Michael Cooperson who argued that the much-debated identity of the slaves in 11th century Malta – from whom the present Maltese population is supposedly descended from – was Slavic.
A 15th century book by the North African geographer al-Himyari recounts that Malta was attacked by Arabs in the ninth century and then left deserted. The Arabs returned in the mid-11th century and resettled on the island, together with their slaves.
Malta was then attacked by the Byzantines. Reportedly, the Muslims made a pact with their slaves that they would repay them with freedom and riches if they joined them in repelling the Byzantines.
Al-Himyari refers to the slaves as għabid, a word that was normally understood to be black mercenaries. However, Prof. Cooperson pointed out that the geographer al-Bakri, writing before al-Himyari, described a certain group of għabid as saqaliba (Slavs). Therefore, he concluded, the għabid of 11th century Malta might have been saqaliba too, as opposed to Africans.
Prof. Cooperson also stressed that Arabic speakers used the term saqaliba to refer to many different European peoples and not necessarily those whom we today call Slavs. Prof. Wettinger had observed that if one assumed that there were a substantial number of African slaves, ‘that interpretation would involve having to account for the eventual complete disappearance of a sizeable Negro population’.
‘I do not agree with the idea that the għabid in al-Himyari must be Slavs,’ he told Times of Malta.
This interpretation, he continued, did not account for the “innumerable black slaves” that were wiped out by Count Roger II in 1127, as per the poem in 12th century Greek, which was recently translated into English by three Maltese academics.
‘In later times, Slav people undoubtedly reached Malta, Gozo and Sicily in smallish numbers through commercial contact in the port of Ragusa or Dubrovnik or elsewhere on the Dalmatian coastline.’
Prof. Cooperson used Ta’ Skorba, derived from sqalba, as an example that the Slavic presence was documented in Malta. Prof. Wettinger adds more names to the list.
‘There are also the surnames Schiavone and Zarb, which are derived from slaves and Serbs. But, then again, there is also Nigret and Ngieret, which mean ‘black’. However, he fully agreed with Prof. Cooperson that the slaves were Muslims.’
Historian Charles Dalli remarked that a new reading of a known source, though less exciting than the discovery of a new one, was always interesting to consider. It has long been known, he noted, that the term saqaliba referred to slaves of eastern European origin.
The only thing we knew concretely, however, was that the slaves in Malta were għabid and that, in a central Mediterranean context, this seemed to refer to slave soldiers, possibly of African origin in view of the usage of the term għabid in similar contexts.
‘Is it possible that there were a number of people of eastern European origin among them?’
‘Yes, of course, it is always a possibility that there were saqaliba among the għabid of Malta but there is no independent evidence to support this. That all the għabid on Malta were really saqaliba seems even less likely.’
‘In his entry on Malta, al-Himyari uses għabid and not saqaliba; the theory as reported claims that al-Himyari was writing għabid while really referring to saqaliba.’
‘This reading does not seem to consider the fact that al-Himyari does employ the word saqaliba to mean saqaliba elsewhere in the same work.’
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