Barbarian tribes had begun to prey upon the Roman Empire in the fourth century, and the fortunes of the Illyrian-populated lands had sagged.

The Germanic Goths and Asiatic Huns had been the first to arrive, invading in mid-century; the Avars had attacked in CE 570; and the Slavic Serbs and Croats had overrun Illyrian-populated areas in the early seventh century.

About fifty years later, the Bulgars had conquered much of the Balkan Peninsula and extended their domain to the lowlands of what is now central Albania.

Many Illyrians had fled from coastal areas to the mountains, exchanging a sedentary peasant existence for the itinerant life of the herdsman.

Other Illyrians had intermarried with the conquerors and eventually assimilated.

In general, the invaders had destroyed or weakened Roman and Byzantine cultural centers in the lands that would become Albania.

Again during the high medieval period, invaders ravage the Illyrian-inhabited regions of the Balkans.

Norman, Venetian, and Byzantine fleets attack by sea.

Bulgar, Serb, and Byzantine forces come overland and hold the region in their grip for years.

Clashes between rival clans and intrusions by the Serbs produce hardship that trigger an exodus from the region southward into Greece, including Thessaly, the Peloponnese, and the Aegean Is- lands.

The invaders assimilate much of the Illyrian population, but the Illyrians living in lands that comprise modern-day Albania and parts of Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, and Greece are never completely absorbed or even controlled.

The first historical mention of Albania and the Albanians as such appears in an account of the resistance by the Eastern emperor, Alexios I Komnens, to an offensive, in 1081, into Albanian- populated lands.

The offense is waged by Vatican-backed Normans from southern Italy.

Mediterranean Southwest Europe (964 – 1107 CE): Taifa Spain, Norman Sicily, and the Italian Communes

Geographic and Environmental Context

Mediterranean Southwest Europe includes Portugal’s Algarve and Alentejo; Spain’s Extremadura, Andalusia, Murcia, Valencia, Castile/La Mancha, southeastern Castile and León, Madrid, southeastern Rioja, southeastern Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands; Andorra; all of Italy including Venice, Sicily, and Sardinia; and Malta.

• Anchors: the Andalusian taifas (Seville, Zaragoza, Valencia), the Ebro corridor and Catalan march, Lisbon/Algarve–Alentejo as frontier, the Castile/La Mancha–Madrid plateau edge, the Balearics under Muslim control, Venice and the Adriatic, Pisa/Genoa on the Ligurian coast, Apulia–Naples, and Sicily–Malta shifting to Norman hands, with Sardinia under Pisan–Genoese influence.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Warm, stable conditions continued; vine and olive belts from Andalusia to Tuscany prospered.

Societies and Political Developments

• Al-Andalus fragmented into taifas (after 1031); Seville, Valencia, Zaragoza competed until Almoravid intervention (1086).

• León–Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Catalonia advanced the Reconquista; Toledo fell to Alfonso VI (1085).

• Norman conquest of Sicily (1061–1091) created a tri-lingual kingdom (Latin–Greek–Arabic); Malta joined the Norman sphere.

• Italy: Venice, Genoa, Pisa matured as communes; Venice led Adriatic commerce and crusade logistics on the eve of 1096.

• Sardinia: Pisa and Genoa contested the judicati.

Economy and Trade

• Taifa luxury crafts (textiles, carved stucco), Valencian irrigation; Venetian, Genoese, Pisan fleets dominated Levant and western Med routes; Sicilian sugar/citrus expanded under Norman irrigation.

Subsistence and Technology

• Andalusi waterworks; Italian shipyards (lateen rigs, standardized hulls); urban notarial systems in Venice and Genoa.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Ebro–Tagus–Guadalquivir trunks; Pyrenean passes (Somport) linking Aragon–Catalonia to Andorra; Adriatic lanes radiating from Venice; Tyrrhenian circuits Sardinia–Sicily–Naples–Rome.

Belief and Symbolism

• Islamic, Mozarabic, and Latin cultures intertwined in Iberia; Norman Sicily’s royal chapel (Palatine prototypes) symbolized syncretism; crusading ethos rose in Italian ports.

Long-Term Significance

By 1107, Venice and sister communes dominated sea-lanes; Norman Sicily was a Mediterranean hinge; Iberian monarchies pressed south against taifas and Almoravids.

Southwest Europe (964 – 1107 CE): Taifa Courts, Norman Kings, and the Pilgrim Atlantic

Geographic and Environmental Context

Southwest Europe extended from the Atlantic coasts of Portugal and northern Spain to the Mediterranean heartlands of al-Andalus, Italy, and the islands of the western sea.
It encompassed the Andalusian taifas, the Castilian and Leonese uplands, the Ebro corridor and Catalan march, the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, and the Italian peninsula from Venice to Apulia.
Mountain chains—the Cantabrian range, Sierra Morena, and Apennines—divided temperate valleys and coastal plains.
Key nodes included Seville, Toledo, Valencia, Lisbon, León, Santiago de Compostela, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Palermo, and Naples, each connected by maritime and overland arteries binding the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Adriatic.

Climate and Environmental Shifts

The Medieval Warm Period (c. 950–1250) sustained stable warmth and generous rainfall.

• Vineyards and olive groves thrived from Andalusia to Tuscany.

• Andalusian irrigation and Italian terraces increased yields, supporting large urban populations.

• In Atlantic Iberia, fertile valleys of the Minho, Douro, and Tagus produced wheat, vines, and chestnuts.

• Seasonal winds—the monsoon-like summer westerlies and Mediterranean sea breezes—facilitated shipping from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Levant.

Societies and Political Developments

Al-Andalus and the Christian Frontier

After the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate (1031), al-Andalus fragmented into taifa kingdoms—Seville, Zaragoza, Valencia, and Granada—each vying for tribute and prestige.
These cities flourished as centers of learning, architecture, and luxury production, until threatened by the northern Christian monarchies.
In 1086, the Almoravids, invited from North Africa, restored unity briefly, defeating Castile at Sagrajas.
To the north, León, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Catalonia advanced the Reconquista, seizing Toledo (1085) and pressing southward.
Lisbon, under the taifa of Badajoz, remained a major Muslim entrepôt linking the Atlantic and the caliphal interior.

The Leónese and Atlantic Heartlands

In the west, the Kingdom of León dominated the 10th–11th centuries.

• Under Ordoño III, Ferdinand I, and Alfonso VI, León extended from Galicia to the Tagus.

• Castile, born as a marcher county, evolved into a frontier kingdom famed for its castles and independent spirit.

• Galicia, integrated under León, revolved around Santiago de Compostela, where the pilgrimage cult of St. James transformed the region into a magnet for European devotion.

• In Portugal, the marches of Portucale and Coimbra revived after 1064, with Porto and Braga emerging as Atlantic trade ports.

Italy and the Central Mediterranean

While Iberia was a land of religious frontier, Italy was a sea of republics.

• In the north, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa matured into maritime communes, pioneering republican institutions, notarial law, and crusade logistics.

• In the south, Normans, led by Robert Guiscard and Roger I, conquered Sicily (1061–1091) and Malta, creating a tri-lingual kingdom blending Latin, Greek, and Arabic.

• Sardinia’s judicati balanced Pisan and Genoese influence, while Naples and Apulia formed the Norman–papal frontier.

• Venice, ruling the Adriatic, became the central broker between Byzantine, Levantine, and western markets.

Economy and Trade

Southwest Europe’s prosperity rested on an intricate web of agriculture, craftsmanship, and maritime exchange.

• Andalusian taifas exported textiles, ceramics, sugar, citrus, and leather, while importing Christian slaves, timber, and metals.

• León and Castile traded grain, wine, wool, and hides through Burgos, Porto, and Santiago’s ports.

• Lisbon re-exported Andalusi goods northward to Aquitaine and Brittany.

• Venice, Genoa, and Pisa dominated shipping lanes to the Levant and Egypt, pioneering lateen-rigged galleysand merchant convoys.

• Sicilian plantations under the Normans expanded sugar and citrus exports.

• Italian banking and credit instruments emerged in urban markets by the century’s end.
  Together, these routes transformed the western Mediterranean and Atlantic into a continuous commercial zone.

Subsistence and Technology

• Andalusian irrigation systems (qanāts, norias, and acequias) sustained dense farming and gardens.

• Romanesque architecture and Moorish stucco carving flourished side by side across Iberia.

• Italian shipyards standardized hulls and rigging; urban notaries codified contracts and loans.

• Water-mills and terraced vineyards multiplied in Galicia, León, and northern Portugal, improving rural productivity.

• Artisanal specialization in glass, metalwork, and ceramics distinguished Córdoba, Valencia, Venice, and Amalfi.

Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Ebro–Tagus–Guadalquivir trunks tied the interior taifas to Mediterranean ports.

• Camino de Santiago, the great pilgrim road, linked Aquitaine and Navarre to Compostela, stimulating monasteries, inns, and markets.

• Pyrenean passes (Somport, Roncesvalles) joined Aragon and Catalonia to France and Andorra.

• Adriatic sea-lanes radiated from Venice; Tyrrhenian circuits connected Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Rome.

• Atlantic sea routes bound Porto, Braga, and Lisbon to Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Brittany, forming a “pilgrim sea” complementing the overland Camino.

Belief and Symbolism

Religious diversity defined the region’s identity.

• Iberia blended Islamic, Mozarabic, and Latin traditions—mosques and Romanesque churches coexisted in frontier towns.

• Cluniac reform reached León, Castile, and Catalonia, renewing monastic discipline and pilgrimage infrastructure.

• Santiago de Compostela became Europe’s third great shrine, after Rome and Jerusalem, symbolizing Christendom’s advance into the western frontier.

• In Norman Sicily, Arabic artisans, Greek clerics, and Latin knights cooperated under royal patronage; the Palatine Chapel embodied this syncretic trilingual culture.

• Venetian crusading ideology merged faith and commerce, anticipating the maritime crusades of the 12th century.

Adaptation and Resilience

• Frontier colonization repopulated Duero and Tagus valleys with mixed Mozarabic, Basque, and Frankish settlers.

• Pilgrimage economies stabilized infrastructure through shared spiritual and material investment.

• Norman administration in Sicily integrated Arabic fiscal systems and Greek bureaucracy with Latin law.

• Italian communes institutionalized civic cooperation, fortifying autonomy amid imperial–papal conflict.

• Maritime republics diversified routes, ensuring continuity of trade even through warfare or piracy.

Long-Term Significance

By 1107 CE, Southwest Europe had become one of the most dynamic crossroads of the medieval world:

• Venice, Genoa, and Pisa commanded the seas, laying foundations for Europe’s commercial expansion.

• Norman Sicily stood as a Mediterranean hinge, fusing Christian, Muslim, and Byzantine traditions.

• Taifa Spain dazzled with artistry even as it faced Almoravid unification.

• León, Castile, and Portugal pushed southward in a Reconquista that paralleled pilgrimage prosperity and frontier growth.

• The Camino de Santiago and pilgrim Atlantic bound Christendom together in faith and movement, while Islamic, Christian, and Jewish exchanges enriched its culture.

This was an age of urban rebirth, seaborne power, and spiritual mobility—a world where ports, palaces, and pilgrim roads alike radiated the vitality of a newly interconnected Southwest Europe.

The venturesome Normans, following their successful conquest of southern Italy, see no reason to stop; the crumbling East Roman Empire appears ripe for conquest.

When Alexios I Komnenos ascends to the throne of Constantinople, his early emergency reforms, such as requisitioning Church money—a previously unthinkable move—prove too little to stop the Normans.

Led by the formidable Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund, the Normans take Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and lay siege to Larissa in Thessaly.

Alexios suffers several defeats before being able to strike back with success.

He enhances this by bribing the German king Henry IV with three hundred and sixty thousand gold pieces to attack the Normans in Italy, which forces the Normans in 1083 and 1084 to concentrate on their defenses at home.

He also secures the alliance of Henry, Count of Monte Sant'Angelo, who controls the Gargano Peninsula and dates his charters by Alexios' reign.

Henry's allegiance is to be the last example of East Roman political control on peninsular Italy.

Robert Guiscard lays the foundations for the new Cathedral of Salerno, the south Italian city situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea, in 1076.

The Schola Medica Salernitana, the world's first medical school, is the most important source of medical knowledge in Western Europe at this time.

Arabic medical treatises, both those that are translations of Greek texts and those that are originally written in Arabic, had accumulated in the library of Montecassino, where they have been translated into Latin; thus the received lore of Hippocrates, Galen and Dioscorides is supplemented and invigorated by Arabic medical practice, known from contacts with Sicily and North Africa.

As a result, the medical practitioners of Salerno, both men and women, are unrivaled in the medieval Western Mediterranean for practical concerns.

The school, which finds its original base in the dispensary of a monastery founded in the ninth century, achieves its utmost splendor between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, from the last decades of Lombard power, during which its fame begins to spread more than locally, to the fall of the Hohenstaufen.

The arrival in Salerno of Constantine Africanus in 1077 marks the beginning of Salerno's classic period.

As a translator, Alfanu is well-versed in both Latin and Arabic and he has translated many manuscripts from the latter into the former.

His interest in medicine and the translation of Arabic treatises on the subject leads him to invite Constantine the African from Carthage (in what is now Tunisia) to Salerno to assist in the translation of Arabic medical texts.

Constantine brings with him to Salerno a library of Arabic medical texts which he commences to translate into Latin.

Through the encouragement of Alfano I, Archbishop of Salerno and translations of Constantine Africanus, Salerno gains the title of "Town of Hippocrates" (Hippocratica Civitas or Hippocratica Urbs).

People from all over the world flock to the "Schola Salerni", both the sick, in the hope of recovering, and students, to learn the art of medicine.

Trapani, one of two Saracen strongholds remaining in the west of Sicily, is besieged by Roger Guiscard’s eldest son, the illegitimate Jordan of Hauteville, who leads a sortie in 1077 that successfully surprises the guards of the garrison's grazing animals.

Its food supply now cut off, the city soon surrenders.

Saracen-held Taormina falls to Roger Guiscard’s Normans in 1078.

Guiscard, to guarantee Apulia against attack from the new rulers of the Empire, wants the territories on the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula, and he begins to build a large navy.

Michael's expulsion and Helen's confinement reawaken his unappeased spirit of adventure and hastens his long-considered expedition.

Now his goal is even more ambitious: to march to Constantinople and crown himself emperor in place of the deposed Michael.