Una nueva fuente para la historia de la sicilia islamica : un pasaje de al-muqtabis V de ibn hayyan sobre la revuelta de ahmad ibn qarhab (300-304/913-916)

Can a detail change the history of Islamic Sicily? The revolt of Ibn Qarhab is a well known issue that marks the island's political transition from the Aghlabid sphere of influence to the nascent Fātimid caliphate in North Africa. Undoubtedly, the reconstruction of the revolt of Ibn Qarhab is based on a late and repetitive corpus of Arab-Islamic sources and, above all, on the irredentist and nineteenth century interpretation given by Michele Amari. The Andalusian source considered here, a passage from al-Muqtabis V of Ibn Hayyān, escaped from the mentioned historiographical networks as well as from the attention of current scholarship; it provides an opportunity to clarify some details and offer new interpretations of the event. The revolt of Ibn Qarhab can be interpreted as an informal quest for legitimacy obtained through alliances and contingencies that, unexpectedly, seems to move the island's centre of gravity from the North African shore to the orbit of influence of the Umayyad emirate of al-Andalus.