The powerful Norman ruler Roger II, having founded the kingdom of Sicily in 1130, had made Palermo his capital, in which Greeks, Arabs, Jews, and Normans work together with singular harmony in creating a cosmopolitan culture of remarkable vitality.

Drawing to his court distinguished men of various provenance, such as the famous Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi and the historian Nilus Doxopatrius, Archimandrite of Palermo, Roger welcomes the learned and maintains a complete toleration for the several creeds, races and languages of his realm.

He is served by men of nationality as dissimilar as the Englishman Thomas Brun, a kaid, or magister, of the Curia, and, in the fleet, by the late renegade Muslim Christodoulos, and his replacement, the Antiochene George, whom he creates amiratus amiratorum, in effect prime vizier, in 1132.

(This title, amiratus or emir, is the basis of the English word admiral.)