405. Norman Conquest: Medieval Mafia Invade The East (Part 5)

0:00Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goal Hangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by WISE. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google,

0:42with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the WISE app today. Be smart, get WISE, T's and C's apply. Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department ever. So carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup.

1:21Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want. Only at Whole Foods Market. So good, so good, so good. Cashmere, outerwear, and boots are up to 60% off at Nordstrom Rack. Save on brands like UGG, Vince, and Cole Haan. Join the Nordi Club for free to unlock exclusive discounts. Great brands, great prices. That's why you wreck. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Durimple. And joining us for this pod is our old friend, Peter Frankopan, who was on one of the very first episodes of this pod two years ago now. Since then, he's published an astonishing book on climate change. He's already the professor of global history at Oxford, the author of The Silk Roads.

2:23But in the next two episodes, we're going to be taking him back to all the stuff he did at the beginning of his career and where he first made his name. And particularly looking in the next episode at his first book, The First Crusade, The Call from the East, which completely changed for many of us the way that we looked at the Normans, looking at them in a sense from the point of view of Constantinople, rather than from Rouen and Normandy and this is what we hope to do in these next two episodes Well we hope to do it but can I just clarify something before we go on? Peter are you going to tell us off in this podcast because the last time you were on you are my mother's favourite guest on Empire

2:57she absolutely adored it because you kicked our butts around the playground the last time you were on and she was there going ah he's so fun this is great this is what they deserve finally my Anita put in her place marvellous so when we think about the Normans we think about obviously the Bayeux Tapestry but you can stand in the eastern Mediterranean and chart their arrival in the eastern Mediterranean which to many people is just going to be a mind-blowing aspect that you've got the family of minor Norman nobles who end up as the most sophisticated rulers in Christendom before they came to that part of the world. Tell us a little bit about Sicily. Who was in charge? Who was running the place before the

3:43Normans wash up? I love that they're still put in their place, that they're minor Norman nobles, that whatever they can achieve after building cathedrals, massive states that spread across the Mediterranean, they've got to be put in their place as upstarts. I mean, what do you have to do to get a break in the medieval world? I mean, the Normans appear in southern Italy around about the second decade of the 11th century. So sort of about 1015, 1016, something like that. And they appear in southern Italy as pilgrims. But above all, they come as, where Normans always appear, they come as thugs. They're hired help that are very valuable for local potentates, barons and lords to settle scores with each other.

4:25And that's a very good business model. People pay you whether you win or lose. And better still, the more violence there is, the more you're in demand. So Normans start to appear in greater numbers. And the 1030s and 40s, they do what any group from outside would do, which is we're very familiar with in the modern world. We tend to call them things like the mafia or criminal gangs. They start to build up their own network where, rather than offering their services to other people, they start to fill their own boots and they start to translate military power and violence into political power and into very significant wealth. And so what starts as a kind of hired help turns into parasites who then overwhelm and overrun

5:10exactly the areas we're talking about. So Southern Italy, Apulia and Calabria and eventually Sicily. That's pretty much what they do in Normandy. And that's pretty much what they do in Britain too. It's a very good business model. Peter, tell us what's going on in South Italy and in Sicily just as they're arriving. and two it's a very good business model peter tell us what's going on in south italy and uh in sicily just before just as they're arriving and also the dates this is just before they're arriving just before the battle of hastings this is not subsequent this is a little bit earlier in the parts of the world we're talking about the battle of hastings has somewhere around zero meaning

5:41it's not the most important thing in the norman world that happens probably in the mediterranean even in 1066 so uh britain much though i don't want to rain on the parade of the bay of tapestry nor on the illustrious history of the normans in in britain and the sort of the raising of the north and the massive amounts of violence they unleash here the the wealth and the connections uh across europe are centered to the south and to the east and when the normans come to southern italy they're stepping into a world of a patchwork of of city-states places like salerno amalfi um benevento capua where there are rival dynasties that have sort of hinterlands around their cities that make them quite rich but not very rich and

6:24that that gives them plenty to want to fight about further south of that you've got a complex world that had been part this has all been part of the roman empire my friends the byzantines were the eastern roman empire this is essentially the roman empire central constantinople uh sees the southern part of italy and sicily as its own backyard because uh's the laws, languages, neighbourhood that connects to Rome and to Constantinople. And they've had to deal with a previous generation or two of incursions, which are from North Africa, who are Muslim raiders, who take over Sicily, take over Apulia and Calabria, and are eventually pushed out by, amongst others, the great Basil the Great, one of the great names in history basil the

7:06bulgar slayer his nickname because of so many bulgarians that he killed and uh and that re that reasserts imperial control in in southern italy so that the normans have an eye on what that might mean for them if they can get involved in the little states on the shin of italy around naples um that then maybe there's going to be greater opportunities. And Sicily is the big prize because Sicily is the wheel on which Mediterranean history has always turned. And so there's an opportunity to see whether they can translate their punching weight in southern Italy into something more substantial. But the first challenge is how can they build a platform for themselves in Puglia and Calabria? Peter, when we were doing our episodes on the Beotabstri and on Hastings, the big sort of USP of the Normans in military terms is their horses, their lances, their shields.

7:59They are the kind of crack cavalry force of their day. Is that also the case when they're in the South Italy? Have they got something that no one else has got that's leading them to be able to carve out this territory? Yeah, look, I think people get very overexcited about chain mail and armour. So hello, Anita's mum. These are like tanks. So they're great. If you've got an enemy in front of you, they're devastating. The cavalry charge and the cavalry techniques that Norman knights have and Western cavalry have are sensational. And when we get to talking about the East, the Near East, Jerusalem, then they're even decisive. But, you know, when you've got tanks that aren't being used, they're a complete pain in the arse.

8:43Horses require a lot of pasture land. They require training. They require grazing. They're not cheap. And so they're great if you're in battle. But when you're wandering around, I suppose when they're off games and they're not busy fighting, I suppose they're a bit like very expensive pimped up cars that you sometimes see around the streets of London or Abu Dhabi or Dubai. You know, these are the status symbols that the kind of young, rich thug turns up in to show you who he's boss. They're symbols of your masculinity. They're statements of chivalry if you're a poet. But to most of the people, these guys are turning up like thugs with tattoos all over themselves. You know what? I have to say, look, I just called them minor Normans.

9:30You've gone through my thugs on pimped up horses. Tell us about Robert Jusquard. I mean, tell us, where does he come from? What is he like? What do we know about him? Well, you don't need me to tell you anything. The clue's in the name. I mean, it means Robert the Weasel. Okay. He sounds dreamy. Yeah, go on. He's the wrong side of the tracks drug baron. That would be the way of thinking about him. Okay, so he is a man who we know from the literary sources when he wants to get money that's not paid to him, he gets the person who owns him the debt and personally pulls out his fingernails, right, to show uh what what crossing him looks like and he becomes the master of of pulia he becomes decisive in the politics

10:12not just of uh the city-states of of the sort of the of the western flank of italy but he becomes very important in the politics of rome he becomes important in the politics also of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople. So in 1059, he's able to build himself a big enough a platform that he does that anybody who's managed to make people bow down and cower in front of him. I guess if you've watched Peaky Blinders and Tommy Shelby, he's a kind of close to home example of that. Brilliant. That gives me a whole new Robert Giscard from anything I've ever thought of before. Yeah. So he says, right guys, now what I want is I want a title. So he gets granted in 1059 the title of the Duke

10:52of Apulia and being granted the dukedom of Apulia in Constantinople, people think, right, well look, maybe rather than waste money going to fight against him, let's do the more progressive and smart thing. Let's see if we can arrange a marriage alliance he's a bit rough around the edges uh he can't really read and write very well he's a bit thuggish but give him time in two or three generations no one will call him a minor norman nobleman apart from anita two thousand years later a thousand years later there's a way of bringing these guys on side and that that is a quite an effective technique it's it's a standard way of trying to work out that you you can't fight against the rising tide and

11:30that's what the normans look like and so there's an attempted marriage alliance uh robert is one of those men i think as i hopefully painted the picture already for whom enough is not enough so he wants to keep on going and so he with his brother uh roger uh start to look at calabria first of all and then at sicily so the first norman expeditions across into sicily in the early 1060s by 1072 palermo has fallen and then it takes a bit of time to mop up all the people who think it might be the wrong way around but you know I mean by mafia, I don't mean to just relate it to kind of criminal gangs in the modern world, but this is how power works. This is how the East India Company works. This is how, as William knows, this is how the Napoleon works. This is how all

12:18structures work in very similar kinds of ways. And I think that the challenge with the Normans is to not over glamorise them, but to understand that the the role of the parasite of being able to take control of the whole body and to turn it towards your own will requires real determination requires a specific set of skills but it requires for you to be needing to build up your own networks that um that put yourself at the top and in a a way, I think that the Viking world, the world of heroin dealers, of people trafficking, it's quite a useful model to think about the Normans because it's a familiar way in which small groups are able to build big networks and able to terrify the living daylights out of people

13:02into knowing what their place is. And like the Godfather, you know, you sort of have the heavy lifting done by the first generation. And I can't just say how much I love that Roger and Robert, the terrible twins who go and sort of wreak havoc everywhere. They're like the boys in the local pub. But then it is son of Roger, Roger II, who ends up with this, you know, respectability and is crowned in 1130 so when roger dies i mean he's quite interesting so during the first crusade he gets asked whether he'd like to take part as the kind of western europe starts to rise and roger uh famously according to one arab writer listens to the pleas of the envoys who are sent to him to ask whether he'd like to

13:43send military help he lifts up his one leg emits a very loud fart and then says that's what i think of this proposed mission because it's bad for business war is a good thing if you're using it to take over assets and uh and to take power if you're going to interrupt trade that's bad for everybody again plenty of modern examples that can show that war involves miscalculation wastage of expenses and interrupts the flows of traffic leads to inflation makes people poorer roger understands that as a business model so doesn't refuses to take part his son has a slightly different uh view on life uh roger the second is able to become become king of sicily in in 1130 there's something called the coronation mantle

14:26that's now in Vienna that is a beautiful robe that you think of high table in Oxford in spades, what do you want to look like if you're the boss? And of course it's velvet, it's gold, it's fabric, it's bling. And it's stitched in the insides of this amazing textiles are Arabic inscriptions there's a way in which you can read this as being connected to the silks of the east and to textiles but also to the milieu that is Christian it's Islamic it's Jewish Sicily attracts all sorts and Roger sits on top of a very diverse island group when the second crusade comes around in the 1140s and again uh you see you see the great leaders of europe at that time louis of france uh and conrad the emperor of germany head off east to go and show their faith uh roger reckons this offers a

15:19better opportunity which is to use it as to attack the western coast of the Byzantine Empire in what's now Corfu and Epirus. And then to figure out that that's a good moment to think about how he could boost his kingdom. So he sends a detachment to go and kidnap, and that really is kidnap, the textile workers and silk workers of Thebes and Corinth to bring them back to Sicily so they can sit in his textile factories. So it's a business model. That's what this all looks like. And Roger, he has the face of a lion, which is quite a nice thing, but he has a raspy, harsh voice. He's not one of those people you want to write a negative biography about, because all men like this from deep experience

16:01have quite short fuses. So you'll find lots of people talking about what an idyllic and wonderful ruler he is and uh but you want to be careful talking for too long at a dinner party and you'll definitely want to laugh at all of his jokes but but at the same time he is a patron of the arts because he understands that uh the symbols matter so he he invests in monasteries he invests in the capella palatina which i'm sure you'll have seen this you know inside his palace in palermo where he depicts himself uh alongside uh christ pantocrata with scenes from the bible in the greek orthodox style with gold and it's it's wonderful but roger is a man who does things his own way so most churches will show the saints and will show jesus christ

16:42and the crucifixion roger says right well i well, I have a bit of that, but let's also have some people getting pissed. Let's have some dancers. Let's have some people going hunting to show that, you know, I enjoy this stuff. And you can imagine the archbishop in the cathedral thinking, are you absolutely sure? That sounds like a good, wouldn't you like a bit more St. Peter or? Yes. Yes. Gosh, I wish I thought of that, Roger. I mean, fantastic. A tiny bit more Jesus. I don't know. Is that all right? But this is the birth of Sicily into something that is often, again, through the rose-tinted glasses, is seen as being a kind of golden age of tolerance. And the reality is that he embraces uh other other faiths you know if he knows about

17:26a muslim doctor or a muslim astrologer he will kind of embrace them and envelop them into into his his court and give them lavish livelihoods yeah i think if if anybody listening to this podcast is member of a high profile criminal gang and was keen to do a live broadcast with anita and william i probably might do it remotely you'll find a very similar response which is i don't really care what you do in your spare time or which god you worship pay me my money and uh that's what this is really about so uh the normans are not huge in number as they uh as like in like as when they come to britain and england and beyond. And so they're quite pragmatic. So they leave institutions in place. They leave the people who know what they're doing.

18:10They let them get on with it. They tell them to tighten up margins. They keep the coinage, for example. The Tari is the standard Islamic coinage of this time. And they'll fiddle around with it. So they'll leave it with Arabic inscriptions on one side, dating with the history, with the sort of the data of Muhammad's pilgrimage to Mecca on it. But then they'll put their own logos on the other side. And quite often they'll do that in Greek to show that, look, we don't mean any harm. And by the way, you're familiar with that because of the Greek language that's been used in the Roman Empire for the previous 300 years. It's a bit complicated. We'll get onto that another time why that's the case uh but they they they understand like any

18:48good business person would do uh whether it's illicit or not that the the business won't just take care of itself you need to have institutions you need to have ordinances you need to have tax collection you need to have threats you have punishments people who get things wrong and so the bureaucracy flows from the fact that you need to have a centralized system and the normal world is one where there's one person who matters and that's that that's the boss at the top so again we can we think about this as a sort of happy hippie everybody holds hands you can be a muslim i can be jewish you could be christian i don't really mind but Sicily in the kind of middle of the 1100s is a military and political, I wouldn't say superpower, that's probably too far.

19:30But it's a place that people think twice about how they should embrace. And that field of vision doesn't stop expanding. We have a book called the Tabula Rogeriana or the Book of Roger, I guess, which doesn't sound quite as glamorous today. I'm glad you said it. I was thinking it. This book of Roger is a kind of, it's a blueprint of what the world looks like. So it's put together by Al Idrisi, who is one of the great geographers, cartographers of his time. We think that there's a massive silver version of this that exists at some point as well as a book that has lots of 70 maps or so and explains how the world works explains what's where uh how people are connected and that that in the hands of a geographer looks like a nice guide to

20:16tell you uh how the world functions in the hands of a ruler not just a norman it looks like who's next on the menu and And the Norman challenge is how from Sicily, where's the value in expanding your business model? How can you make yourself richer? And also, how can you make sure that you're going to keep yourself defended from any potential rivals that might turn up next door? And the Normans are uniquely good at doing that. I mean, the Norman conquest of 1066 in Britain is the last time that Britain gets invaded with a sort of quick shout out to our Dutch listeners in the 1680s. But, you know, it's definitive. And that shows that there's real thought that goes into maximising what the what the grip on somebody's private parts looks like.

20:59The Normans are very, very good at doing that because these things, they don't get built by mistake peter just before we go to the break um how much are these very exotic figures with their capella palatinas and their uh muslim notaries and all the rest of it and ibn jubair and benjamin and all these very exotic names how much of these guys in touch with our familiar friends uh in the tower of london and uh i mean is it the same world? Do they recognise that they're cousins to each other? Yeah, just explain to me what you mean by exotic, because I'm not quite sure what that's... I mean, in the hands of an English or in the hand of a Scot, they sound exotic, but I mean, they don't sound exotic to anybody else.

21:39I mean, so I think it's in the eye of the beholder, the exoticism. I mean, the Normans have an idea that they're part of a of a wider network of of winners that's what i want to focus on so how how much are they all intermarrying with their cousins in yorkshire for example is that going on or are these people now down in the south a completely different world in collect much more interested in what's going on in the eastern mediterranean i think if you're in the if you're in the if you're in the mediterranean the appeals of the moors of yorkshire are reasonably distant so there's an understanding within this world of connectivities uh not just seeing the normans as being something separate and unique uh there's great deal of interest in what's going on in the parts of the world

22:18and who is being successful i mean the interface it's really south north to south normans in in and people in the british isles are thinking about what's happening in the Mediterranean and beyond much more than people are thinking the other way. And that's because of trade. That's because of business. That's because of power. And so this world, which, you know, I would definitely push back on any ideas that these people have exotic names or it's all sort of very distant. That's what it looks like if you have the privilege of being in Britain, but not if you're a part of the soup of this world of power. We are going to go to a break. Can I just say, Mum, he's doing it again. And second of all, I'm being very polite.

22:55We were literally in therapy last time. I can tell why you didn't get me back for years. Yeah, there we go. I'll hear from you in 2035 but just before we go to the break i mean just in in a nutshell would the the normans that we're talking about roger and his lineage look at the normans of britain and think oh poor poor cousins hope they're doing fine i hope they don't visit never want to visit them i mean is that the kind of relationship that you're painting no i think that that first generation in the 10 from 10 15 or so until 10 40 50 there are lots of connections familial and marriage wise that those of course peter out i mean we're now already about 150 years onwards so it's it's a bit like saying um to someone where are you really from in today's world you know do

23:42you do your ancestors can't really be from this world? I think that the appellation Norman doesn't always get used in the way that we think that it does. You know, when you've got royal and imperial power, you use it and you're thinking about tomorrow rather than about yesterday. So it's great to get historians involved in all of this, people like Geoffrey Malaterra, William of Apulia, all my great friends whose works I love reading. But that, you know, people are thinking about what comes next. They think about their personal legacies rather than where do they come from. Well, we're going to take a break now. Join us after the break where we continue talking to Peter Farrakhan. Wish us luck.

24:21Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department ever, so carve up turkey and spiral-cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 Brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high-fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want. Only at Whole Foods Market. So good, so good, so good. Stay cozy and look cool with up to 60% off cold weather gear at Nordstrom Rack. Save on cashmere, outerwear, boots, and more from brands like UGG, Vince, Cole Haan, and Hunter. Join the Nordy Club for free to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop clearance and new arrivals first and more from brands like UGG, Vint, Cole Haan, and Hunter. Join the Nordic Club for free to unlock exclusive discounts,

25:07shop clearance and new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack. If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strands Agents. It's an open-source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some tools, let it decide what to call and when, and loop until it's done. No chain configs, no graph orchestration, and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strandsagents.com. The king has many Muslim doctors and astrologers who he covets and takes great care of to such an extent that when he becomes aware

25:58of a Muslim doctor or astrologer traveling through his land, he grants him such a lavish livelihood that he forgets of his home. His ministers and chamberlains are generally Muslim eunuchs of whom he has a huge troop. They form the court elite. From them shines the splendour of his kingdom, because of their magnificent clothing and swift horses. And there is none among them who do not have their own retinue and slaves and attendants. Around him the king has many slave girls, and no Christian king is given more to luxury nor greater comfort. In immersing himself in the pleasures of the land, in the formation of laws, in the establishment of procedures, and in the majesty of his realm, he resembles the rulers of Muslims.

26:49So that is by the Muslimlim traveler ibn jubeir i was enjoying the solemnity with which uh william was reading what i was thinking as he got to the end of that i thought if i was even jubeir it's like it's my substack where's my money right pay me for writing this stuff and it's a it's beautifully crafted so if you read it quickly and it goes look it's a fantastically wealthy place of full of tolerance magnificent clothing quite exotic if i may say so don't do that again what are you doing anything south of dove is exotic yeah i understand that but what he's actually saying is these guys are blinged up he's got a lot of slave girls which uh is not a particular even in the 12th century not everybody thought that that was great uh no christian king is more given to luxury nor greater comfort

27:28that's great if you're trying to think of somebody's wealthy but it's also somebody who is overindulged i mean think of our great tech titans and their unlimited wealth that's not great and in fact the kicker is the final line where he says in the majesty of his realm he says he resembles the rulers of muslims so he says that you can't land a punch on Roger by saying that he's somehow indolent, because that's what all of our rulers back home look like. So all of this has double-edged swords to it. But where is back home for Ibn Jabbar? I mean, I'm fascinated. I want to know a bit more about him and how he sort of ends up in the Norman mercenary court. So he's from andalusia and goes to mecca on pilgrimage in uh the 1180s comes back and um and enjoys his time in sicily

28:14he he presents a picture of tolerance of uh everybody be able to get along with each other the king saying look i don't care what god you worship. I'm just here for everybody to have a great time. And by the way, I've got my slave girls and my fancy threads to wear. And I don't mean any trouble to anybody. In fact, what he also says, if you read it, the bits that get quoted less, is that he gets people coming up to him in the streets and says, we have to conceal our faith. He gets people who says, look, there's no scarcity of goods and wealth if you're rich and you're connected, but not if you're not. And there's an uneasy tension underneath all of this. The presentation of a world that is open and meritocratic has some truth to it.

29:00No question, particularly if you can compare it to other parts of the world, the persecutions of jews in in medieval england yeah yeah so there's some of that but uh the fact that the king is just fantastic and amazing imgur is also writing about this uh to signal back to the rulers in in granada and cordoba and in in muslim spain to say this is what ideal rulership looks like you should put all that stuff behind you you need to be inclusive uh you need to be open-minded and in fact he makes a big thing uh Imogen Baird saying that you know the the ruler is personally very kind to him he meets him in person and that has a kind of obviously a resonance for Sicily but he's writing this for an audience back home to say

29:40maybe that bit where you're aloof and whatever is something you should learn from now you said that already in the 12th century people are not um thrilled by the idea of uh harems full of slave girls and there are in fact full denunciations of roger from the north aren't they people like bernard of clervo calls him is it he who calls him the baptized sultan i mean there's people are distinctly edgy in the north about what's going on and the fact that there's there is this court that looks so very unfamiliar to them yeah they're edgy about that they're also edgy in the north about what's going on and the fact that there's there is this court that looks so very unfamiliar to them yeah they're edgy about that they're also edgy about the fact that um

30:10in sicily the normans don't do what anybody tells them you know they're not taking orders from anybody so bernard can write as many uh annoyed letters as he likes uh but he's also not part of the mainstream you know but bernard is hugely important he's one of the great galvanizers of the second crusade you know has a very strong faith as you probably guess he's he becomes a saint in fact um and so for him seeing the idea of accommodation where muslims are are walking around in the streets and women in the norman world are dressed as as imam jubez says as muslim women as they go about their business uh it's very threatening. So there's a bit of the kind of weirdo right wing about Bernard and others, which is that anybody who's

30:50unusual and who is accommodating and dealing with our notional enemies needs to be censured. And in fact, when we talk about the Crusades, you get a lot of that too, that the new arrivals who pitch up in places like Jerusalem, first thing they do is they go, right, where are they? Let me go and kill them. And everyone sort of shrugs and sighs and thinks, well, just give it a few months, son, and you'll work out that we don't get to eat unless we can deal with our local neighbours. And you can still have a different perspective on life while having a different faith. So the Normans, it's a melting pot that's unusual because the Muslim population of France, where Bernard comes from is very small

31:26if not negligible you won't find many Muslims knocking around in the British Isles at this time and so that idea of cosmopolitanism, it's not just Sicily that's threatening, so too is Constantinople so too is the Near East when the Crusaders get there so there's a bit of mealy mouthness of people people like bernard well i mean you're you're making bernard sound like disgruntled from tunbridge wells with you know and having that much of an of an impact on it you know well he i'll tell you what he loses his shit at the end of the second crusade he goes bananas when he finds out that the byzantine emperors don't just drop everything and could do more. And so this is a very judgmental world where it's easy to think that other people are exotic,

32:10for choice of a better word. And in fact, it's very easy to orientalise. That's what this is all about. It's the idea that other communities don't look like us and that that's a threat. But what I'm really enchanted by is that by Roger II and beyond, you know, this is run like a multinational company where you get the best talent from everywhere. I mean, for example, Roger's Inner Circle is pretty amazing. You've got George of Antioch, who's a Greek Christian from Syria, who has a good CV. You know, he's come with a CV. He served Muslim rulers in Tunisia. He's, you know, and he's running the fleet. He's running the fleet he's running the treasury he is he is surrounding himself by people of talent george is great he's cool his

32:51his job title uh as top as his final point of a cv is amiratus amiratorum which means admiral of all the admirals so they don't do this by half right it's like i'm not just the boss i'm the boss of the bosses and of course that's where the word admiral comes from from amir from uh which is a sort of the sicilians who use all the normans it's a it's a muslim title yeah no it's not it's an arabic title i think but the point is that that these guys like george who's from a greek orthodox background has a strong connection with antioch which is one of the great patriarchal cities of the east and one of the great patriarchal cities of the East. One of the most important cities in Christendom. Finds that there are jobs for him in Norman, Sicily.

33:31And the Normans are very, very shrewd. They are classic talent spotters. They are looking for people who are good at what they do. And if you're good at what you do and you're loyal and you don't shoot your mouth off when you're drunk and start complaining or lampooning the boss then there's a place for you and and that speaks i think to um like you said anita it's a business model but it it starts to dress itself up with all the apparatus that all states then have of of chapels of cathedrals of mosaics of of of titles and in a way what you can see with the normans is how all states function like that so take me back to if we did a podcast on on ancient rome take it take us back to the great early uh courts of the middle ages in in india before before you get royal courts that

34:18start to really emerge at regional level it's the same process that happens with all of these and i think that that pathology it's very the normans it's great because it's the kind of it's the same process that happens with all of these. And I think that that pathology, it's very, the Normans, it's great because it's the kind of, it's the perfect corpse. I mean, when I was an undergraduate, the medics got given, introduced a dead body to teach them how to be doctors. And the Normans in Sicily are the fantastic example of what are we looking at? How does this stuff actually work? And you could be dazzled by Constantinople. You could be dazzled by the Tower of London and kind of bypass some of those questions about how does power function?

34:48How does it work? How does it want to be represented? And who's good at it? And, you know, as we get towards the end of the line here, part of the problem is that the Normans have done one thing that gangs are not always good at doing, which is succession planning. So they reached the end of the line in Norman Sicily because they haven't thought about succession planning. And again, people who have studied business histories will know that that's a kind of classic way of where things go wrong. You haven't thought about who comes after Steve Jobs or after Tim Cook, because you think it's such an exalted position and it's difficult to find someone powerful enough to unite everybody. But I still don't think I quite have my head

35:21around whether, you know, they would feel Normans or would they feel Sicilian or would they feel like this is a new thing that we've created and we're in charge? I think they wouldn't think, ask the question unless they were asked on a global podcast. On a podcast by two morons. No, no, no, not morons. I think in the same way, it wouldn't cross your mind to say I'm Roman. It's just self-evident that that's what you are. And so I think that the Norman roots of the kingdom are clear. But from Norman Sicily towards the end of the 1100s, you're playing on a much, much bigger canvas than the windswept fields of northern France or even the British Isles. So, of course, there's a connection and the Norman heritage is important.

36:08And in fact, the bit that would be recognisable would be the administrative structures. What the Normans who come across to the British Isles bring with them are Mediterranean laws, tax structures, cadastres. I mean, the Doomsday Book is a classic Byzantine Roman imperial textbook. And so it's the Normans in the north who are more interested in connecting themselves back south so for example when you are and it's a very good question they need about whether they think of themselves normans it's the same thing you know would you say what does william the conqueror think himself a scandinavian you know like i said it's about today and tomorrow rather than yesterday so if you got him in a good mood

36:41and said how do you feel coming from the fjords or from, you know, does that do you ever think about where you really come from? You probably have a mild sense of failure first. But it's about the history. He'd say that gets done. I'll pay someone to go and write that. I'm just generally not interested. The extraordinary range of folk who are part of this court, whether they're from Antioch or whether they're people in charge of the treasury who are from Fatimid Egypt and so on. This multiculturalism, if you want to call it that, this multi-ethnicity and multi-religious nature is always said to be summed up by the Capella Palatina. We mentioned it very briefly in passing in the first half. But take us there now.

37:22Describe to me what you see when you walk into the the chapel in the palace in palermo uh does it look anything like like uh uh durham cathedral which is how we think of norman architecture in britain or is it completely different well we think about our in the british isles uh of our big cathedrals being dark. And that's a function of our friend Henry VIII, some of that. It's also a function of availability of materials and of craftsmen. A lot of this is to do with a sort of circuit within the Mediterranean of people who are very good artisans who are able to do stuff to order. And the cathedral in Monreale, the Cappella Palatinaina are examples of what wealth looks like but also what outstanding craftsmen so you can pay for whatever you like i mean durham is

38:12absolutely jaw-dropping as a cathedral that shows that the stone masonry the architects the engineers are able to build something so spectacular i mean it's it's completely breathtaking and i suppose if it was all lit up with gold um you you would be even more so but it's to do with the milieu of the mediterranean so the normans get the credit for the fact that they're stepping into a world that that people know what to do they know how to make these things i'm sure many people have been on holiday to palermo and gone to the capela palatina but for those who haven't seen it, it's in many ways the equal of the Alhambra or the Great Mosque of Cordoba. You walk into this extraordinary chapel, you look

38:51up and it is an Islamic ceiling with the stalactite murkhanas that you might expect to see in a mosque. You look in front of you and you have these extraordinary mosaics that look like something you'd expect to see in Constantinople. There are round Norman arches of the sort. There's a distant cousin of what you might see in a Norman church in Normandy or in a Cistercian monastery. But the light is something just dazzling. And anyone that hasn't seen this should go there there's this exquisitely carved and painted gilt honeycomb which still explodes like a supernova of islamic starbursts with the light of the candles flickering below and upstairs in the palace you've got these gilt mosaics showing paired heraldic leopards padding soft-footed

39:42under fruit trees centaurs prancing among palms and cypresses, lions stalking antlered stags, peacocks climbing through vine scrolls. It's just one of the most incredible things. When I had my wedding anniversary, I so loved this world that I bought Olivia a little ring from this world that I found in London. And it's got this same mixture of sort of Islamic and particularly Byzantine in it. Does this also spread to the outside? I mean, do you have sort of the pleasure gardens and the fountains and, you know, that sort of layout that we associate with the Arab world? We talked about Ibn Jubayr earlier and Benjamin of Tuleida, and they have these extraordinary descriptions. Just to read out for a second what Benjamin of Tuleida says about exactly that.

40:33He comes through in 1170, and he talks about the king taking trips on the palace lake in boats clad with gold and silver with his women. He talks about Islamicic style pleasure gardens inherited from the calbed emirs bred leopards and hawks and menageries with giraffes and elephants and camels and lions lynxes apes bears peacocks ostriches a lake stocked with amazing fish and beyond a hunting park with fallow deer roe deer and a wild boar well i mean it it sounds kind of cool actually i don't know anita i mean look i do it slightly differently as uh you know with my medieval hat on number one it sounds like somebody didn't know what they wanted so you go just give me everything right second i don't think we would talk about elon

41:17musk's house like this if we are oh my god and if you clap the lights come on and he's got fountains here and do you think it's too gauche do you think it's trying too hard is that what you're saying i think it's i think you look it's it's it's a statement of extreme wealth right and therefore of extreme centralization of power and therefore the social structures that sit underneath that about what the roles are for women what the roles are for barons and what the roles are for the for the poor oh you've put me off it now you've completely put me off now. It is absolutely breathtaking. No, no, you've ruined it for me. Don't say that. I don't care now. That's fine. You've just ruined it. But the centaurs and the leopards or whatever,

41:54it's overwhelmingly beautiful. But I think at the time... No, no, too late for that. Ruined. Elon Musk's Pleasure Palace. I think at the time, people would have turned up and thought, my God, this looks naff. Peter, one last story, please indulge me. You mentioned the coins. And from my golden road, this is a story which I got very excited about because this is the first time that the Indian number system which starts off at the time of Ashoka in northern India has made its way through Abbasid Baghdad to the southern shores of the Mediterranean and I think this is right in saying that the the Indo-Arabic numer, the same numerals we use today, the first time they appear, rather than the old Latin ones of, you know, XVMC, XV1 and all that sort of stuff,

42:59is on an 1138 coin minted in Rogers Court in Palermo. Is that right? Yeah, people don't, I mean, people don't use Latin numerals like that. In fact, they use Greek alphabet, algebraic letters of alpha, beta, gamma, delta to indicate dates. There are other number systems that don't have how we think of the Romans. We were writing the year 1878 and it goes on for sort of half a page. There are all sorts of ways in which complex mathematics is being done beforehand. But clearly what the key is, is things that are simple and can be interpreted by multiple different eyes, makes things easier. And so again, the multilingualism of Sicily is not just about making everybody feel happy, it's also the cause of least resistance. So if you've got people who

43:40want to buy and sell things, if you want them to obey their laws, you've got to do those in ways in which people understand. So in that sense, it a bit like a shoker putting up pillars that are in in greek and aramaic and sanskrit it's a way of saying i don't really care who you are you clowns here are the rules so i think to some extent the the use of of standardized um coinage systems of simplifications both of laws but of also of um lettering of numbering it's it's about making life easy for people because if if life is easy for people and they understand what they're doing then then the wheels will turn efficiently so i think with with this with this stuff it's it's more to do with how do you reduce barriers how do you make the oil and the motor run and the normans

44:21are fantastically good at doing that in sicily as they are in britain and that's why norman the normans really build britain into what it is it's a decisive break um not just from the anglo-saxon world which of course is well run as you'll have spoken about but it's about working out how do you put how do you supercharge something that already does quite well into something that's going to be more ambitious and and the normans the lack of frontiers of their ambitions is what makes them stand out as being unusual in this period one one last link between that these two worlds on roger's death his principal treasurer who's an englishman called thomas brown goes back to england uh and serves as an officer in Henry II's

45:06Exchequer and he tries to introduce the the Indo-Arabic numerals here and if one's interested it then doesn't take off at all so again there are links between these worlds still. But what that means is that is that what what's already there works very well you don't need to simplify everyone knows what they're doing so you don't need to you don't make any better if something works it's not broken you don't need to fix it it's about it's about where you're trading with it's about who you're connecting with where your cultural influences are based but also what what is next what's your next ambition what's your next frontier and the normans are always thinking about what comes next peter that's. We'd love you to come back in the next episode

45:45and jump over to the Eastern Mediterranean because the Normans are not happy with just stopping at the incredibly rich kingdom that they've created in Sicily. They're going next for Antioch. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durham. If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strands Agents. It's an open source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some tools, let it decide what to call and when, and loop until it's done. No chain configs, no graph orchestration, and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strandsagents.com. This is the sound of confidence.

46:41Confidence behind the wheel of the Mazda CX-50 Hybrid. It comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features and lets you explore far and wide with an epa estimated 38 miles per gallon combined and electronic all-wheel drive mazda move and be moved tap the banner to discover how confidence comes standard mileage will vary based on vehicle condition driving habits and other factors used for comparison purposes only actual results will vary stonefire non condition, driving habits, and other factors. Use for comparison purposes only. Actual results will vary. Stonefire Naan is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out Stonefire Naan with dips at every dinner party.

47:16I make Naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over. I use Stonefire Naan to reward the humans who do my bidding. Right. It's perfect for camping trips. Dance for it, feeble mortal. Sorry, is he talking to me or...? Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together, we gnaw.