Sicily - Plaything of Foreign Powers

Colonised by the Greeks from the 8th century BCE, Sicily was included as part of Magna Graecia. However, by 242BCE, Sicily was in Roman hands, becoming Rome’s first province outside the Italian peninsula. For the next six centuries Sicily remained something of a rural backwater, prized chiefly for its golden fields of grain, which were a mainstay of the food supply for the Roman population.

In AD826, an Islamic army of Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards, Cretans and Persians was sent to Sicily. The conquest took more than a century to be completed, with Syracuse holding out for a long time, but the island was finally conquered in AD965. During this period, new kinds of crops, such as oranges, lemons, pistachios and sugar cane, were brought to Sicily from North Africa.