page_title: Emirate of Bari
hierarchical_section_title: Emirate of Bari
caption_attribution_description: Tinted lithograph of emperor Louis II at the capture of Bari in 871
context_page_description: The Emirate of Bari was a short-lived Islamic state ruled by Berbers. It was ruled from the south Italian city of Bari from 847 to 871. It was the most lasting episode in the history of Islam in peninsular southern Italy.
  Bari first became the object of Aghlabid raids in late 840 or early 841, when it was briefly occupied. According to Al-Baladhuri, Bari was conquered from the Byzantine Empire by Kalfün around 847, a mawla—perhaps a servant or escaped slave—of the Aghlabid Emir of Africa. Kalfün was probably of Berber stock, possibly from the Emirate of Sicily originally. The conquest was seen by contemporary Muslims as unimportant, having been carried out by a minor figure without the support of any other Muslim state. Requests were sent, however, by Kalfün's successor, Mufarrag ibn Sallam, to the Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil, in Baghdad, and his provincial governor of Egypt for recognition of the conquest with the title of wali, a governor ruling over a province of the Caliphate, which was granted. Mufarrag expanded Muslim influence and enlarged the territory of the emirate.
context_section_description: The Emirate of Bari was a short-lived Islamic state ruled by Berbers. It was ruled from the south Italian city of Bari from 847 to 871. It was the most lasting episode in the history of Islam in peninsular southern Italy.
  Bari first became the object of Aghlabid raids in late 840 or early 841, when it was briefly occupied. According to Al-Baladhuri, Bari was conquered from the Byzantine Empire by Kalfün around 847, a mawla—perhaps a servant or escaped slave—of the Aghlabid Emir of Africa. Kalfün (Khalfun) was probably of Berber stock, possibly from the Emirate of Sicily originally. The conquest was seen by contemporary Muslims as unimportant, having been carried out by a minor figure without the support of any other Muslim state. Requests were sent, however, by Kalfün's successor, Mufarrag ibn Sallam, to the Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil, in Baghdad, and his provincial governor of Egypt for recognition of the conquest with the title of wali, a governor ruling over a province of the Caliphate, which was granted. Mufarrag expanded Muslim influence and enlarged the territory of the emirate.
  The third and last emir of Bari was Sawdan, who came to power around 857 after the murder of his predecessor Mufarrag. He invaded the lands of the Lombard Principality of Benevento, forcing Prince Adelchis to pay tribute. In 864 he finally obtained the official investiture requested initially by Mufarrag. In the middle of the 860s, a Frankish monk named Bernard and two companions stopped in Bari on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They successfully petitioned Sawdan for letters of safe-conduct all the way through Egypt and the Holy Land. According to the Itinerarium Bernardi, Bernard's record of the event, Bari, the civitatem Sarracenorum, had formerly belonged to the "Beneventans".
  The Hebrew Chronicle of Ahimaaz records that Sawdan, the last emir of Bari, ruled the city wisely and was on good terms with the eminent Jewish scholar Abu Aaron. Christian monastic chronicles, however, portray the emir as nequissimus ac sceleratissimus: "most impossible and wicked". Certainly Muslims raids on Christians (and Jews) did not cease during Sawdan's reign. There is evidence for high civilisation in Bari at this point. Giosuè Musca suggests that the emirate was a boon to the regional economy, and that during this time the slave trade, wine trade, and trade in pottery flourished. Under Sawdan the city of Bari was embellished with a mosque, palaces, and public works.
  In 859, Lambert I of Spoleto joined Gerard, count of the Marsi, Maielpoto, gastald of Telese, and Wandelbert, gastald of Boiano, to prevent Sawdan from re-entering Bari after a campaign against Capua and the Terra di Lavoro. Despite a bloody battle, the emir successfully entered his capital.
  The emirate of Bari lasted long enough to enter into relations with its Christian neighbours. According to the Chronicon Salernitanum, ambassadors (legati) were sent to Salerno where they stayed in the episcopal palace, much to the dismay of the bishop. Bari also served as a refuge for at least one political rival of the Emperor Louis II, a man of Spoleto who fled to it during a revolt. In 865 Louis, perhaps pressured by the Church, always uncomfortable with a Muslim state in Italy's midst, issued a capitulary calling upon the fighting men of northern Italy to gather at Lucera in the spring of 866 for an assault on Bari. It is unknown, from contemporary sources, whether this force ever marched on Bari, but in the summer of that year the emperor was touring the Campania with his empress, Engelberga, and receiving strong urging from the Lombard princes—Adelchis of Benevento, Guaifer of Salerno, and Landulf II of Capua—to attack Bari again.
  It was not until the spring of 867 that Louis took action against the emirate. He immediately besieged Matera and Oria, recently conquered, and burnt the former. Oria was a prosperous locale before the Muslim conquest; Barbara Kreutz thus conjectures that Matera resisted Louis while Oria welcomed him: the former thus was razed. This may have severed communications between 
caption: The joint capture of Bari by Franco-Lombard troops under the direction of the Emperor Louis II in 871.
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