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Dr Alex Metcalfe

Senior Lecturer

Degree: B.A., M.A. (Exeter College, Oxford), B.A. (Leeds), Ph.D. (Leeds), FRHistS.

Personal website

Current Teaching

Please note that I'll be on study leave and away from my office until October 2012.

Research Interests

• Regional focus: the Mediterranean basin and islands, especially Sicily; Italy; North Africa; Iberian Peninsula; Egypt.
• Period: The Middle Ages (c. 500 - c. 1300).
• Principal research area: Islamic Sicily and the south Italian Normans.
• Primary source materials: mainly charters and narrative histories (Arabic, Greek and Latin)
• Political History: medieval chanceries; law, administration and governance; the formation and disintegration of pre-modern states in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
• Religious History: politico-religious ideologies; sacral authority and rulership; Muslim and Christian concepts of holy war; interfaith relations; religious assimilation and conversion.
• Social and Socio-Economic History: socio-religious change; concepts of acculturation; transcultural contacts; ethnicity and identity-formation; frontier communities; occupations and social hierarchies; kinship and 'tribalism'; social and fiscal status of Muslims under Christian rule and vice-versa.
• Historical Linguistics: bilingualism and multilingualism; medieval translation movements; onomastics (anthroponyms and toponyms); Sicilian Arabic; medieval Italo-Greek and early Italo-Romance dialects.

Publications (authored, edited, forthcoming)

• 'Muslime unter christlicher Herrschaft im normannischen Sizilien' in Sizilien - Schnittstelle im Mittelmeer, ed. W. Gruber (Vienna: Mandalbaum Verlag, 2013, forthcoming).
• I musulmani dell'Italia medievale (Palermo, 2013, forthcoming). This is a revised and fully updated Italian edition of The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009).
• Introduction to Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean [the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series] eds. Sarah Davies-Secord and Elizabeth A. Cawthon (Texas A&M Press, 2013, forthcoming).
• Forgotten Connections? Material Culture and Exchange in the Central and Western Mediterranean C7th-13th, (ed. with Mariam Rosser-Owen), a themed issue of al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 25/1 (2013, forthcoming).
• Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily: The Monreale Census Lists. New critical editions of royal Arabic and Greek charters with commentaries, translations and indices in multiple volumes (forthcoming from 2013). See Arabic Documents of Norman Sicily for further and forthcoming details (NB website is under construction). Click to view and download a project poster (opens as 2Mb .pdf).
• The Book in Fact and Fiction in Pre-Modern Arabic Literature, (ed. with Antonella Ghersetti), a themed volume of the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies (2012). ISSN: 0806-198X. 263 pages. Click to read or download the volume.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 10 (2010) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 352 pages. ISBN 978-0-7486-2007-4. Paperback edition: 978-0-7486-2008-1. Click for extensive preview. Click for purchase details.
• 'The Lands of Twelfth-Century Corleone', 'The Christians of Twelfth-Century Corleone' and 'Extracts from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr' in Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation, eds. K. Jansen, J. Drell and F. Andrews (Richmond: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 65-70 and 234-40. ISBN: 978-0812241648. Click for purchase details.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 9 (2009) editor. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• 'Sicilian Arabic' in The Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, eds K. Versteegh, M. Eid, A. Elgibali, M. Woidich and A. Zaborski, 4 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2009), iv, pp. 215-19. ISBN: 978-90-04-14476-7. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 8 (2008) edited with Joseph N. Bell and Lutz Edzard. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read online.
• 'Trusting the text as far as we can throw the scribe: further notes on reading a bilingual jaridat al-hudud from the royal diwan of Norman Sicily' in From Al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, eds. P. M. Sijpesteijn, L. Sundelin, S. Torallas Tovar, A. Zomeno, [Islamic History and Civilization Series: Studies and Texts, vol. 66], (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 78-98. ISBN: 90-04-15567-8. Read in Lancaster e-prints. Click for purchase details.
• Under-Age Rule in the Medieval Islamic World (2007) editor. Themed volume of al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean with editor's introduction. Click to read in Lancaster e-prints. Click for purchase details.
• Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 7 (2007) edited with Joseph N. Bell. ISSN: 0806-198X. Click to read.
• Review of Sheila S. Blair's Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh, 1998) in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32 (2005), 138-9. Click to read via JSTOR.
• Review of Jeremy Johns's Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge, 2002) in English Historical Review 119 (2004), 118-120. Click here to read via EHR site.
• Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily. Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 286 pages. ISBN 0-7007-1685-8. Read an extensive preview online. Click for purchase details. Now available in paperback: click for purchase details.
• The Society of Norman Italy, edited with Graham A. Loud (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 381 pages. ISBN 9004125418. Click for limited preview.
• 'The Muslims of Sicily under Christian Rule' in The Society of Norman Italy eds. Graham A. Loud and Alex Metcalfe (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 289-317. ISBN 9004125418. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• 'De Saracenico in Latinum Transferri: Causes and Effects of Translation in the Fiscal Administration of Norman Sicily', Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 13 (2001), 43-86. ISSN: 0950-3110 0950-311. Read in Lancaster e-prints.
• 'The Mystery at Chúrchuro: Conspiracy or Incompetence in Twelfth-Century Sicily?' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62/2 (1999), 226-59 (with Jeremy Johns). ISSN: 0041-977X. Click to read via JSTOR.

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