Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History

by John Julius Norwich

Meanwhile the Saracens displayed, as so often throughout their history, a degree of religious toleration which permitted the churches and monasteries and the long tradition of Hellenistic scholarship to flourish as much as ever they had done. In other ways too the island benefited from its conquerors. They brought with them a whole new system of agriculture, based on such innovations as terracing and siphon aqueducts for irrigation. They introduced cotton and papyrus, melon and pistachio, citrus and date palm and enough sugarcane to make possible, within a very few years, a substantial export trade.