Aspra, Sicily Aspra, Sicily Aspra (Aspira in Sicilian) is a town in the "comune" of Bagheria in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy. A village within the municipality of Bagheria, approximately of 3700 inhabitants, by the sea at the East end of the Palermo's Gulf facing the capital city of Sicily. Typical are the wooden boats (lancitiedde in local dialect) vividly colored. The first traces of the town are thought to belong to the period of Arabic domination in Sicily, as it is suspected that the name comes from the Arabic حجر («stone»). Aspra was in fact, for generations, used to
Kingdom of Sicily as frankly exploitative. Furthermore, many scholars believe that Sicily went into decline in the late Middle Ages, though they are not agreed on when this decline occurred. Clifford Backman argues that it is a mistake to see the economic history of Sicily in terms of victimization, and contends that the decline really began in the second part of the reign of Frederick III, in contrast to earlier scholars who believed that Sicilian decline had set in earlier. Where earlier scholars saw late medieval Sicily in continuous decline, Stephen Epstein argued that Sicilian society experienced something of a revival in the