Leonardo da Vinci: An Arab?

Much is known about Islamic Spain and Portugal, but very little about the history of Islamic conquest in Italy.

Islamic influence in Italy is not to be discounted and it survives to this very day. When I visited the Italian Peninsula, I came across a church and heard a tour guide note that the church's arches are not native architecture but Arabesque influence from the time of Berber pirate attacks against the coastline.

khelil 692 JbWS6 19672

Medieval Islam was not also at war with Italy. There are cases of voluntarily conversion with no Muslims present:

In the 7th and 8th centuries, some of the Lombards, a Germanic people that ruled parts of northern Italy, were reported to converted from Arianism to Islam instead of to Catholicism. Most of the converts, known in Arabic as al-Ankubarti, served as mercenaries in armies of states of the African Mediterranean coast, especially in Ifriqiya.

And Muslims, at times, were invited into Italy at the behest of besieged kingdoms:

The magistrate of Sicily, who rebelled against the Byzantine Empire, had called on the Muslims (named Saracens by the Europeans) for help. To end the constant mutinies of his army, the Aghlabid magistrate of Ifriqiya sent Arabian, Berber, and Andalusian rebels to conquer Sicily in 827, 830 and 875, led by, amongst others, Asad ibn al-Furat. Palermo fell to them in 831, followed by Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878. In 902 the Ifriqiyan magistrate himself led an army against the island, seizing Taormina in 902. Reggio Calabria on the mainland fell in 918, and in 964 Rometta, the last remaining Byzantine toehold on Sicily.

And the affects were often positive:

Under the Arabs, agriculture in Sicily prospered and became export oriented. Arts and crafts flourished in the cities. Palermo, the Arabian capital of the island, had 300,000 inhabitants at that time, more than all the cities of Germany combined. At the beginning of the 11th century, Muslims made up half of the population of Sicily, with Arabs dominating the north of the island around Palermo and the Berbers predominating in the area around Agrigento in the south.

Given the high degree of Arabs that were once present in southern Italy, it is not surprising that while many Arab Muslims were eventually forced out, Arab genes remained since the Arabs no doubt intermixed with the people and many stayed as converts to Christianity; a condition of their being allowed to stay:

"An inspection of Table 1 reveals a nonrandom distribution of Male Northwest African types in the Italian peninsula, with at least a twofold increase over the Italian average estimate in three geographically close samples across the southern Apennine mountains (East Campania, Northwest Apulia, Lucera). When pooled together, these three Italian samples displayed a local frequency of 4.7%, significantly different from the North and the rest of South Italy (…). Arab presence is historically recorded in these areas following Frederick II’s relocation of Sicilian Arabs"

In that regard, it is not surprising that Leonardo da Vinci may be an Arab:

Leonardo Da Vinci may have been an Arab, according to scientists who have studied a single, complete fingerprint found on one of his paintings.

The print, taken from the artist's left index finger, was discovered after an exhaustive three-year trawl through his works by researchers at the University of Chieti.

"Around 60 per cent of the Middle Eastern population have the same structure," he said.

The revelation will give weight to the increasingly popular academic theory that Da Vinci's mother, Caterina, was a slave who came to Tuscany from Istanbul.

Alessandro Vezzosi, an expert on the Renaissance genius and the director of the museum in his hometown of Vinci, said: "We have documents that suggest she was Oriental, at least from the Mediterranean area.

On a separate, but related note: da Vinci would not be the first European lionized in art. The indisputable Arab Ibn Rushd or Averros, as he is known by his Latin name, left an enormous mark on Western civilization and was painted in Raphael's famous 'School of Athens' situated between Aristotle and Plato on the left as a reflection of his work on the two men which reintroduced them to the then intellectually morbid West and sparked the debates that lead to the Renaissance:

raphael school of athens ViDUK 19672

I would not be surprised to learn that the Mona Lisa is also Arab. I always thought she looked a little Moroccan.