A (Brief) Beginner’s Guide To Maltese History Part 6: The Arabs
The Arabs. Malta has had a love/hate relationship with them since like, forever. This dramatic teenage-like relationship spans back centuries, and we’ve been working on a series which will help you get to know our conquerors one by one.
We covered the Daddies, the purple loving guys, and the other daddies.
From the seventh Century onwards, Europe started witnessing an expansion of the Arab rule.
Even though the Byzantines greatly improved our defensive system throughout their Forts Competition, in around 870 AD, Malta was taken over by the Aghlabid Arabs.
These guys stayed here for over 200 years, helping us shape our language, customs and social structures.
Sadly, we have very little documentation of these times.
Most of the evidence is found in the National Museum of Gozo, with irreplaceable gems such as the Prism stone, adorned with Kufic characters, and also Maimuna’s tombstone.
Needless to say, we also converted to Islam during this period.
The Christians were tolerated and accepted by the Arabs. They really didn’t care what religion we were following at the beginning of their conquest, so to all those saying that we were forced into it, it looks like nobody was actually forced into doing anything. And everyone was just genuinely free to do their own thing. This would later become known as “the good old days.”
Although we do not have much monumental or architectural evidence of the Arabs, we owe them a giant thank you for introducing us to the whole citrus fruits thing.
The introduction of the cotton, fig and almond plants was also their idea — along with those delicious pastini we all like to gobble up during festa season.
We also really need to thank them for giving us our first proper irrigation system, and for coming up with the whole terraced fields idea we still keep on using today.
Maybe we should also thank them for introducing us to the waterwheel we still use in fields today too while at it?
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