Syracuse, Sicily Sicily until it fell to the Aghlabids after another siege on 20/21 May 878. During the two centuries of Muslim rule, the capital of the Emirate of Sicily was moved from Syracuse to Palermo. The Cathedral was converted into a mosque and the quarter on the Ortygia island was gradually rebuilt along Islamic styles. The city, nevertheless, maintained important trade relationships, and housed a relatively flourishing cultural and artistic life: several Arab poets, including Ibn Hamdis, the most important Sicilian Arab poet of the 12th century, flourished in the city. In 1038, the Byzantine general George Maniakes reconquered the city,
Frederick III of Sicily the Simple, though he himself did not use an ordinal. Frederick was born in Barcelona to Peter III of Aragon and Constance of Sicily, daughter of King Manfred of Sicily. When his father died in 1285, he left the Kingdom of Aragon to his eldest son, Alfonso, and that of Sicily to his second son, James. When Alfonso died in 1291, James became king of Aragon and left Frederick as regent in Sicily. The war between the Angevins, who contested the title to Sicily from their peninsular possessions centred on Naples (the so-called Kingdom of Naples), and the Crown of