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
Muslim conquest of Sicily governor was captured, the town was plundered—Ahmad al-Habashi reportedly took along the local cathedral's marble columns to decorate his palace—and its fortifications razed. The fall of Malta had important ramifications for the defence of what remained of Byzantine Sicily: with Reggio in Calabria and now Malta in their hands, the Muslims completed their encirclement of the island, and could easily interdict any aid sent from the east. From 872 to 877 there was apparently a period of calm, since the sources are silent on any military operations in Sicily. This was probably chiefly due to internal turmoil in Muslim Sicily,