Al-Shurafā’ al-Ṣiqilliyyīn – Il valore dell’eredità storico-culturale siciliana in Marocco. Riflessioni su una migrazione antica fra identità immutate e in trasformazione

The historical, ethnographic and genealogical sources (manuscripts; archives) relating to Arab-Muslim Sicily (827-1091 [‘Abbās 1970]) are powerful tools for in-depth inquiries into the socio-political and cultural complexity of North Africa (ad-Dūrī 2008). As pointed out by Berque-Pascon (1978), sharifism, which was an important aspect of the political systems in NA during the Almoravid (XI-XIIth) and Almohad (XII-XIIIth centuries) regencies, can be understood as a strong socio-political institution reinforced by its moral and religious standing. It is founded on the wilāya affiliated with the members of Ahl al-Bayt (i.e. shurafā’), and hence indicates the ʽaṣabiyya among social parties, operating as a social contract that acknowledges social sectarianization but avoids community fragmentation at the same time (Lévi-Provençal 1922). Moreover, the linkages between sharifism and Sufism in Morocco (al-Qādirī 1909) illustrate a set of affiliations which prompt a re-consideration of sectarianization as not only being an exclusively modern phenomenon (as-Sūsī 2014). Bringing this research as the result of in-field investigation carried out on ancient ẓahīr malakī (Moroccan Royal Edits)/ genealogies sources/manuscripts at Zāwiya aṣ-Ṣiqilliyīn (Fes, Morocco) and Antonio Salinas Museum (Palermo, Italy) [2012-2013], this paper aims to underline the little investigated migration of Arab-Sicilian shurafā’ to Morocco during the XII-XIIIth centuries (Rizzitano 1956) according to a cross-temporal perspective. In doing this, I hope to uncover their centrality within the Moroccan political establishments and their influence upon Moroccan socio-cultural identity, a product of their genealogical prestige and their contribution to the debate between the Malikite Sicilian school and its analogous located in Baghdad, Cairo, Kairouan and al-Andalus (DeLuca 1989).