Daugther of the Winds

Of the Prof. Joseph Brincat  (Malta, agost 2000)

Get to know Pantelleria 

When I reiceived an invitation to take part in a meeting in Pantelleria, my knowledge of the island was limited to the fact once they must have spoken a language quite similar to Maltese.

I had become aware of this similarity when i read a couple of articles by Giovanni Tropea on the "pantesco" dialect, and later I produced a comparative study, Malta e Pantelleria: alla ricerca di un sostrato comune, based maily on its Semitic substratum, for Joseph Aquilina’s Festschrift in 1977 (Journal of Maltese Studies, n. 11).

This was quoted by Tropea in his Lessico del dialetto di Pantelleria (CSFLS, 1988) and by Varvaro in his Lingua e storia in Sicilia (Sellerio, 1981) and was therefore noticed by the members of Ambience e/è Vita  who organised a conference on «Pantelleria e il Mediterraneo ».

Whit the support of the island’s Comune and Trapani Province, they invited a historian, an antropologist, a linguist and two archaeologists. The meeting was held last month in the inner courtyard of the imposing castle which has guarded the small port since 1086 and which up to a few decades ago served as military station in the higher foors and a prison at ground level.

HISTORY

The first speaker was Henri Bresc, an expert on the medieval history of Sicily, who illustrated Pantelleria’s role as a reconnaissance outpost for its various invaders: before the Norman conquest in 1127 it used to warn Tunisia when the Sicilian fleet was on its way by sending homing pigeons. Bresc suggested that this tecnique would have been very useful for Kninghts of Malta to Keep Sicily informed of events during the Great Siege of 1565.

He then dwelt on Pantelleria’s shifts between Islam and Cristianity. On account of its position as the first stepping stone to Sicily, it was attacked as early as 700 by the Muslims who destroyed and abandoned it. Between the Arab conquest of Cartage and 840 it provoded refuge to the North African Christians who remined faithful to the Church and to the Byzantine state, and therefore maintained its Greek character and the cultural values that were being lost in Carthage.

The island was conquered definitively by the Aghlabites (Ibn Khaldun credits Ziyadat Allan but gives no date) and repelled a Byzantine attack in 834-5 (Amari, 1880-81). The ferocity of the take-over is mentioned in a poem by Ibn Hamdis, who hints at a radical depopuletion after the Christian inhabitants were massacred, and by al-Dimishqi. It is not known when Arabic speakers settled there, but Bresc stresses that Pantelleria maintained for a long time the peculiar "regno arabo" fostered by the early Norman Kings, where communities professing different religions, but unified by language (Sicilian Arabic), were ruled by a local feudal governement subordinate to the monarchy and administered by a Greek and Arabic-speaking boreaucracy.

In Pantelleria in the 14^th and 15^th centuries a Muslim majority of farmers and artisans and a minority of Arabic-speaking Jews who were merchants and artisans were socially dominated by the Catalan and Genoese conquerors (administrators and soldiers) and the Christian Mozarabs.

The model was short-lived in Sicily, probably because it was overwhelmed by massive immigration of bourgeois Latin-speakers and mass conversions, while the Muslim leaders emigrated to the Maghreb, but it was also applied in Malta Where a mixed community of Christians and Muslims is documented possibly as early as 105354 (al-Himyari and al-Qazwini distinguish Between "Muslims" and "their slaves"), though 1091, 1130-1154, 1175, 1224,1241, up to 1245-6.

The main difference between Malta and Pantelleria was that Malta was Christianised early, but not fully Latinised, while Pantelleria was inhabited by an Arab-Muslim majority at least up to the 1490s. Documents do not mention a mass exodus but it seems that the inhabitants of Pantelleria moved slowly away from Islam through indifference.

Christianisation began in 1353 but, as in Malta, there was no pressure for Latinisation. This means that between the 14^th and the 17^th centuries Pantelleria was following the Maltese model of a Semitic-Romance diglossia. The mudeiar community may have emigreted in 1492 or slowly became extinct, but the language resisted. Bresc points out that the Arabic dialect of Pantelleria was still spoken in 1670: a French merchant who wanted to communicate with the islanders had to seek the help of a Maltese interpreter.

LANGUAGE

Nothing is known about the shift from the old Arabic dialect to the new Sicilian dialect (it is much easier to explain the spread of Italian there in the 20^th century). The decrease in population may have played an important part, as well ascumulative immigration from Genoa and Sicily.

The paper I presented at this conference actually tackled the contrasts and the similarites between the linguistic situations of Malta and Pantelleria as opposing outposts of the Semitic and the Romance blocs. While Maltese can be defined as the most Romanised of the Arabic dialects, pantesco is certainly the most Semitised of the Romance dialects.

What is quite intriguing is that the geographical positions would suggest an inverse hypothesis: beging much nearer to the African coast (70 km) Pantelleria should logically speak a Semitic dialect, while Malta begin nearer to Sicily (90 km) than to Africa (300 km) should speak a Romance dialect.

But the principles of linguistic geography have been outplayed by historical events and demographic developments (Brincat 1991; 2000, ch.6). While the populetion of Pantelleria, with its fair share of harsh raids and resettlements, amounted to 4,600 in 1757 and grew to 7,000 in 1881, Malta’s multiplied steadily from 5,000 in 1048 to today’s 380,000. Just imagine, an island with an area of 83 km, slightly bigger than Gozo’s 67 km, inhabited by only 7,000 persons against Gozo’s 25,000. One cannot help inferring that Malta would have looked somewhat like that, had it not been developed by the Kenights and the British.

Apparently the contrast in development is due mainly to our Grand Hrbour, for Pantelleria had, and still has, a very small port. In a paper on "Language and Demography in Malta.

The social foundations of the symbiosis between Semitic and Romance in Standard Maltese" (1991), I explained the social and linguistic implications of the development of the harbour area under the Knights, connecting its growth in population, from barely 1,000 in the borgo in 1530 to 40,000 in 1798 with the resultig standardisation of the Maltese language, a process which continued in the 19^th century.

In Pantelleria communications between the country hamlets and the port town were so bad, up to the first half of the 20^th centuri, that two different varieties of Sicilian developed, the older one with a stromg Arabic substratum, and the more recent Trapanese. Nowadays the regional Italian of Sicily has rapidly taken over, because of centralising factors such as the building of better roads and the aiport,the island’s administrative dependence on Trapani, the influence of television and the influx of tourists.The difference is immediately noticeable because the countryfolk’ s pronuciation of the Semitic h has been replaced by k in all the place-names (Kàmma, Rekàle,Tikhirrìki, Dakhalè, Gelkamar, Khàgiar, Khaffèfì, Khania, Khareb, Kharucia, Khufirà).

Almost all the rural toponyms are of Arabic origin , as those quoted above clearly show since they correspond to the Maltese words hamm (heat or warmth), rahal,triqir-rih,dahla,gebel ahmar,hagar,haffiefea(pumice), hnejja,herba, (art) harxa, hofra.

Others are equally transparent: Balata dei Turchi, Fram (bakeries), Gadir, Monte Gibele,Gibiuna,Kuddia (a hill), Maggiuluvedi (marg-il wied) , Masira (a mill ), Salibi (a crossroads),Sciuèki, Sillumi (a ladder), Triqnakhalè, Ziton (olive grove), Zubebi ( dry grapes).

Even the Byzantine name of Pantelleria is derived from Arabic Bent al-ariyah and corresponds to Maltese "Bint l-irjieh". The Arabic element is generally typical of a primitive rustic culture, dependent on local farming, as I pointed out in my aforementioned article (Brincat 1977) to which I refer the reader who may be interested in a fuller exosition. Here I shall only give a few examples which need no explanation: "àrfa, ddukkèna, hàma , kenni, ballutu, hurrìhi (hurrieq), lillucia, zabbàra, hazzèsa, mahòtu, nnòkkulu, bbarnùsu, hasìra, kubba, rruddèna, taba, zzarbùni, zzìbbula, hanèhi (hanek), kallutu, zzuzzu-niàri",and a few maritime terms: "bbirkàciu (burqax), bbommarinu, firdikula(artikla), rroci i mari (raxx-il bahar)".

These few examples (which include a couple of Romance terms peculiar to Maltese and Pantesco) give a sufficient idea of the depth and breadth of these contacts, but it is important to note that their primitive nature shows that the relationship is not direct (one’s influence on the other). It consists of two isolated and unequal survivors of a linguistic situation which was much more widespread one thousand years ago. Here lies their interest to comparative historical studies, especially in the Arabic elements that they conserve and that have been lost in Sicily and may have also changed in Maghreb speech.

ANTHROPOLOGY

I expect the Semitic element to dwindle further in Pantelleria, because I could see That many of these terms are nort familiar with the young and middle-aged (for instance the hasira has become cannizza). The language, which had never been standardished, has changed a lot since Tropea drew up his studies in the Sixties, and proves that a very small community cannot resist strong social pressures when it is no longer isolated. This was borne out by Antony Galt (Universty of Wisconsin) who had actually lived on Pantelleria for 15 months when researching for his Ph.D. in cultural antropology.

Galt’s paper presented the resuls of his 1968-69 fieldwork, illustrating the tansion between atomism or "amoral familism" (menefreghismo) and the need for community solidarity. It seems that rural Pantescans are individuals marked by divisiveness and distust and that their social life is limited to membership of the circolo,of which there are two or three in every hamlet.

Surprisingly for us, they do not celebrate religious feasts with pomp and fireworks, nor do they have band clubs or political party clubs. Their circoli are strictly for social recreation, like watching TV and holding baptism or wedding parties.

Their only great celebration is Carnival which goes on for seven days spread over three weeks and consists mostly of dancing in the circolo according to variable sets of rules whose complexity was described by Galt in Ethnology, XII,3 (1973). He also touched on patron-client relationships and siperstition and amusingly explained the ritual his wife Janice (Whom they called Gianna) had to undergo when one day she had expressed her admiration of a cow and the next day it stopped producing milk.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Enrico Giannitrapani reported on the excavations of a Bronze Age Village in Mursia which have yielded some oval foundations of huts (7m by 3m) which were homes some 4,000 years ago. The village sat on a promontory which has recently been separated by a road from the burial sites known as the Sesi. These look like large giren but are not hollow inside: these circular rubble structures simply have long narrow corridors leading to individual burial chambers. The largest one has about eight corridors which converge, but do not meet, at the centre like the spokes of a wheel. It is surrounded by 27 smaller sesi and must have been used for the ruler’s family or for the community’s heroes.

In the Neolithic age Pantelleria’s obsidian spread not only to Malta and Lampedusa but also to the South of France, the Adriatic and Greece. The island cointains various reminders of the Phoenicians, who called it Cossyra: a quay inside the present port, some walls which protected an acropolis, and rockhewn cisterns, urns and sherds, but these sites await proper exavations. Traces of the Medieval period include the remains of a monastery and some Byzantine tombs.

TOURISM

The economy is slowly shifting from agriculture to tourism but as yet the island is largely unspoilt. Its volcanic nature gives it a strange though familiar feeling,for the fields are lined with rubble walls and the farmerslive in odd dammusi, but the stones are black, and rocks are jie-black too, right down to the water’s edge.

There are no sandy beaches but the rocky coves and caves are loved by divers and can be admired on a daylong loat tour, winds permitting, or by caror bike from a perimeter road 40 km long. Other roads link the quaint hamlets and climb up an 830m high mountain which risee at its centre and offers spettacular views.

I heard that occasionally yachtspeople from Malta do venture that far (220km), however it would be a pity if they did not have a good look at the hinterland. The small port is of little interest, resembling Mgarr with a bit of Bugibba since the old buildings were carpet-bombed by the Allies in World War Two. The locals insist that the unleashing of 6,400 of bombs in 30 days was not really necessaty but Frank Capra just wanted a good documentary for propaganda purposes.

The rest of the island is very green and varied: there are terraced vineyards dotted with huts similar to our giren, woodlands of pines and oaks, like the 1,500 hectares that cover the sides of mountain, besides the macchia, and the garigue by the sea. Chauffered minibuses are very cheap and can take you to enjoy unusaual sights like the Lago di Venere with its bubbling watyers where people take free thermal mudbaths, the crater at vKuddia Mida, natural saunas and favara, where vapours hiss out in trickles and gusts. These are reminders that,although the last eruption took place 8,000 years ago, this island still sits on a volcano. The most recent activities produced two island at sea in 1831 and 1891, respectively five and one km long, but both submerged to produce reefs. They are being scientifically monitored from Erice.

By the way , their typical sweets are mustazzola for Christmas and pasticciotti for Easter. The former are like our qaghaq tal- ghasel but smaller, and the second are our Figolli. In the days of coasting trade (cabotaggio) social relations must have been more frequent as some surnames show: "Di Malta" and "Maltese" are found in Pantelleria but not exits in Malta but not in Pantelleria.

To prove these old-time movements, the general manager of the caper’s cooperative proudly told me that his grandmother was a Debattista from Gozo: her family had migrated to Lampedusa where she got married and her son later moved to Pantelleria.

The volcanic island can be reached by a daily ferry- boat from Trapani (five hours) or by plane from Milan, Roma, Palermo and Trapani, with Gandalf, 30 minutes.). Three- star hotels are comfortable and reasonably priced at 120.000 lire /aout $58) full board; food is very good and varied.