conflict Roman officials were installed permanently in Sicily. Rome’s jurisdiction in Sicily was legally imposed with the Lex Rupilia in 131 B.C.
The Romans adopted in Sicily the same strategy they used in other regions where their colonization activities were introduced. They confiscated properties and land and established the ager publicus, the foundation of the future Sicilian latifundium, a landed estate owned by a powerful man and his family. Sicilians were enslaved on Roman properties and revolts ensued. Charismatic slaves led these uprisings.
Roman domination of Sicily ended when the Byzantine Belisarius captured the island in A.D. 535. The Byzantine occupation left few cultural and social marks on the islanders.
Far more significant was the Arab conquest of the island from 827 to 1091. This occupation brought Sicily into the modern world. A new language, religion and culture were introduced. The Sicilian language assimilated hundreds of Arab words. The Arabs transformed Sicily into a dynamic Middle Eastern culture. The industrial sector flourished and provided an incremental development of the economy. Thousands of Muslims settled in Sicily bringing their sciences, customs and laws to the island. Denis Mack Smith states that the Arab conquest “made Sicily part of a splendid African civilization.” However, Sicily became a battlefield for Islam and Christianity. In Sicily the theological arguments among Christians, Muslims, Arians, Manichaeans and others remained doctrinaire and therefore irrelevant to the Sicilian people.
The Norman conquest from 1091 until 1200 introduced in Sicily