Sicily is a lush and culturally rich island at the center of the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout its history, the island has been conquered and colonized by successive waves of peoples from across the Mediterranean region. In the early and central Middle Ages, the island was ruled and occupied in turn by Greek Christians, Muslims, and Latin Christians. In Where Three Worlds Met, Sarah Davis-Secord investigates Sicily's place within the religious, diplomatic, military, commercial, and intellectual networks of the Mediterranean by tracing the patterns of travel, trade, and communication among Christians (Latin and Greek), Muslims, and Jews. By looking at the island across this long expanse of time and during the periods of transition from one dominant culture to another, Davis-Secord uncovers the patterns that defined and redefined the broader Muslim-Christian encounter in the Middle Ages. Sicily was a nexus for cross-cultural communication not because of its geographical placement at the center of the Mediterranean but because of the specific roles the island played in a variety of travel and trade networks in the Mediterranean region. Complex combinations of political, cultural, and economic need transformed Sicily's patterns of connection to other nearby regions-transformations that were representative of the fundamental shifts that took place in the larger Mediterranean system during the Middle Ages. The meanings and functions of Sicily's positioning within these larger Mediterranean communications networks depended on the purposes to which the island was being put and how it functioned at the boundaries of the Greek, Latin, and Muslim worlds.
"Davis-Secord's book represents a valuable contribution to our understanding of medieval Sicily. The synthesis of such a vast body of source material and its situation within the most recent advances in the historiography of the region is quite an achievement indeed. Davis-Secord, by allowing the reader to appreciate the different roles Sicily has played in those three different 'worlds' reference
Early Medieval Europe
"Where Three Worlds Met is important for helping to understand medieval Sicily. It covers a sweeping chronological scope, not just synthesizing a broad range of scholarship, but also crafting a new lens through which we can view the island. By... viewing it as the nexus for traveling soldiers, merchants, intellectuals, holy men and refugees, Davis-Secord charts the shifting import of Sicily. Sicil
The Medieval Review
"Overall... Davis-Secord's work makes a significant contribution to the way we ought to frame our questions about the medieval Mediterranean and Sicily, in particular."
