Emirate of Sicily conquer Castrogiovanni (the modern Enna, where Euphemius died) and retreated back to Mazara. In 830 they received a strong reinforcement of 30,000 Ifriqiyan and Andalusian troops. The Iberian Muslims defeated the Byzantine commander Teodotus in July–August of that year, but again a plague forced them to return to Mazara and then to Ifriqiya. The Ifriqiyan units sent to besiege Palermo managed to capture it after a year long siege in September 831. Palermo became the Muslim capital of Sicily, renamed al-Madinah ("The City"). The conquest was a see-saw affair; with considerable resistance and many internal struggles, it took over a
History of Sicily put down the rebellions (it was during the siege of Syracuse that Archimedes was killed). Carthage briefly took control of parts of Sicily, but in the end was driven off. Many Carthaginian sympathizers were killed - in 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerius told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily". For the next 600 years, Sicily was a province of the Roman Republic and later Empire. It was something of a rural backwater, important chiefly for its grain fields, which were a mainstay of the food supply for the city of Rome until the annexation of