Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Southern Italy and the Islands

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 11 realms and principalities in Southern Italy and the Islands, with 84 lords and officers, 238 towns, ports and sites, 20 church lands and religious houses and 0 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. The Papal State: the pope's own landsInnocent IIIPapal lands

    On 1 January 1200 the Papal State is two years old in its new form.

  2. Commune of RomePandolfo della SuburraCity commune

    Rome on 1 January 1200 is a commune that has given its key to the pope but still makes war on its own account.

  3. Diepold of Acerra and the German captainsDiepold of SchweinspeuntGerman captains

    Diepold is the strongest German captain left on the mainland of the kingdom of Sicily.

  4. Kingdom of Sicily under the regencyFrederickKingdom

    On the morning of 1 January 1200 the kingdom of Sicily belongs to a five-year-old king, Frederick, crowned at Palermo in May 1198 and an orphan since November 1198.

  5. Markward of Annweiler's partyMarkward of AnnweilerGerman party

    Markward of Annweiler was the most powerful of Henry VI's German servants in Italy: an unfree ministerial who became the emperor's seneschal (September 1185), fought on the Third Crusade, won Genoa over and commanded the Genoese and Pisan fleets for the conque

  6. The Muslims of western SicilyMuslim communities

    The Muslims of Sicily, once the island's majority, had by 1200 shrunk to the west: Palermo's suburbs, the towns of the Val di Mazara (Ibn Jubayr in 1184-1185 still found Muslim towns at Alcamo and Trapani, mosques and qadis at Palermo), and above all the villa

  7. Kingdom of CagliariWilliam of MassaSardinian kingdom (giudicato)

    The southern of the four Sardinian kingdoms, from the Sulcis and the Iglesiente round the gulf of Cagliari to the Sarrabus and the Ogliastra, ruled from Santa Igia on the lagoon west of modern Cagliari.

  8. Kingdom of ArboreaPeter ISardinian kingdom (giudicato)

    The western kingdom of Sardinia, from the Arburese and the Marmilla up the Tirso valley to the Barbagias, ruled from Oristano near the old capital of Tharros.

  9. Kingdom of Torres (Logudoro)ComitaSardinian kingdom (giudicato)

    The northern kingdom of Sardinia, the Logudoro ('the place of gold'), from the Nurra and the gulf of Asinara through Sassari's countryside and the volcanic uplands of the Meilogu to the Goceano, the Marghine and the Nuoro country.

  10. Kingdom of GalluraSardinian kingdom (giudicato)

    The north-eastern kingdom of Sardinia, from the granite of the Gallura and the Coghinas to the Posada, the Orosei gulf and the Bitti uplands, ruled from Civita, the port that later became Terranova and is now Olbia, closest of all Sardinian harbours to Pisa.

  11. The Corsican lordsThe Corsican lineages of the castlesIsland lords

    Corsica in 1200 is an island of castles and kin-groups, of mountain districts (pievi) each with its mother church, and of decayed Roman coastal towns, under an overlordship Pisa has claimed since the popes entrusted the island to its bishop in the 1070s and ma

Self-governing peoples and other lands

Records of this region that belong to no single realm page.

Primary sources for Southern Italy and the Islands

  • The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad) (1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185). The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court.
  • The Deeds of Innocent III, Anonymous (a curial official, perhaps Peter of Benevento) (about 1208 to 1209). The curia's own account of the pontificate's first decade, with letters copied in.
  • The Ingeborg Letters and the French Interdict of 1200, Innocent III and the papal chancery (1198 to 1213; the interdict letters December 1199 to September 1200). The first event of 1200.
  • Annals of Genoa, by Caffaro and his continuators, with Ogerio Pane for 1197 to 1219, Ogerio Pane and the other official annalists of Genoa (year by year under the commune's authority; the 1197 to 1219 section by Ogerio Pane). The official record of the commune.
  • Annals of Pisa, by Bernardo Maragone, with continuation, Bernardo Maragone (1160s to 1175, continued to 1192). Pisa's official annals stop in 1175 and their continuation in 1192, so there is no Pisan narrative for 1200 itself.
  • Chronicle of Sicard, bishop of Cremona, Sicard of Cremona (about 1210 to 1213). A universal chronicle whose last part is a well-placed eyewitness account by a Lombard bishop who served emperors and popes.
  • Annals of Montecassino; Annals of Ceccano (Fossanova) (12th and early 13th centuries; Ceccano to 1217). Two sets of annals from either side of the papal and Sicilian frontier.
  • Book in honour of the Emperor, or On Sicilian affairs, Peter of Eboli (1195 to 1197). An illustrated verse account of Henry VI's conquest of Sicily, preserved in a single manuscript made at the imperial court.
  • Chronicle of Richard of San Germano, Richard of San Germano (first version about 1216, enlarged to 1243). The fullest southern narrative of the Hohenstaufen kingdom, written by a notary on the border of the Terra di Lavoro.
  • The Book of Census of the Roman Church, Cencius Camerarius (Cencio Savelli, later Pope Honorius III) (1192, with later additions). The papal rent roll: every church, monastery, town and kingdom that owed a census to Rome in 1192, diocese by diocese, with the sums, followed by lists of papal lands and castles, the ceremonial Ordo and copies of charters.
  • The register of San Pietro di Silki (11th to 13th centuries). A monastic register of lands, serfs, gifts and lawsuits in the giudicato of Torres (Logudoro), written in the vernacular.
  • The Registers of Pope Innocent III for 1199 to 1201, Innocent III and the papal chancery (22 February 1199 to 21 February 1201). The pope's outgoing letters for the year, in his chancery's own copy, touching nearly every realm in the atlas.
  • The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, Benjamin of Tudela (about 1173). A generation before 1200 but the only survey of its kind: the Jewish communities and their heads from Navarre through Provence, Italy, Constantinople and the Aegean, Antioch, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus, Mosul and Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, with notes on rulers, trades, the exilarch at Baghdad, the Assassins of Syria and Persia, and hearsay on India, Ceylon and China.
  • The Cairo Geniza Documents (about 950 to 1250 for the bulk of the historical documents). Letters, court records, accounts and lists from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat that show the working of the trade that bound Egypt to Ifriqiya, Sicily, al-Andalus, Aden and India.
  • Chronicle of Burchard of Ursberg, Burchard of Ursberg (about 1229 to 1230, reworked by Conrad of Lichtenau). Written a generation later by a fierce partisan of the Staufen and a critic of Innocent III.
  • Chronicle of Otto of St Blasien, Otto of St Blasien (about 1209 to 1210). A Swabian continuation of Otto of Freising written from the Staufen side.
  • Regesta Imperii V: calendar of the acts of Philip, Otto IV and Frederick II, 1198 to 1272 (calendar of documents of 1198 to 1272, published 1881 to 1901). A dated calendar of every known act of King Philip and King Otto IV, with the acts of popes and princes that bear on the Empire.
  • Register of Innocent III on the affair of the Roman Empire, Innocent III and the papal chancery (1198 to 1209, compiled as a separate register at the curia). The pope's own file on the German throne war: letters to and from Philip, Otto, the German princes and bishops, and the famous Deliberatio of late 1200 or early 1201 in which Innocent weighs the claims of Frederick, Philip and Otto before deciding for Otto.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.