NORMAN ADVENTURES IN AFRICA

Less than a century after William the Conqueror's invasion of England, his compatriots embarked on another ambitious military assault - on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Levi Roach tells the story of the Norman kingdom of north Africa

- Levi Roach

One day in the early 1070s, the Norman count Roger I of Sicily was hosting a meeting of his 0 advisers when something they said irked him. "Roger lifted his thigh and made a great fart," reported the Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athir, "saying: 'By my faith, here is far better counsel than you have given'."

The Normans are best known for their conquests. So it may come as a surprise to learn that Roger's flatulence signalled his contempt for advice that he should join a planned invasion of Africa, the great continent across the Mediterranean to the south.

In the years preceding this incident, Roger's influence along the seaboards of southern Europe and north Africa had been growing steadily. Indeed, the Normans represented a rising power on both sides of the Mediterranean and, by the second half of the 11th century, their neighbours were beginning to sit up and take notice.

It was in this context that messengers from Genoa and Pisa had arrived at Roger's court, inviting him to join them in a military expedition against Mahdia, the capital of the Zirid rulers of north Africa (now on Tunisia's east coast). The two Italian city-states were looking to muscle in on the lucrative trade between the western and eastern Mediterranean, much of which passed along the north African coast, and they rated their chances of success far higher with the Normans at their side.

Roger's advisers were keen to join the expedition but, as we know from Ibn al-Athir, the count was sceptical. As Roger noted, if the expedition against Mahdia were to succeed, then the profits would go mostly to Pisa and Genoa. But if it failed, it was the Normans who would face the consequences. Roger had recently concluded a peace with Tamim ibn al-Mu'izz, the Zirid ruler. He did not want to risk this truce for a speculative venture.