A brief history of Sardinia from Prehistory until today

History of Sardinia

Sardinia's history is very ancient. In 1979 human remains were found that dated back to 150,000 BC.

In Prehistory Sardinia's inhabitants developed a trade in obsidian, a stone used for the production of the first rough tools, and this activity brought Sardinians into contact with most of the Mediterranean people. Desiccated grapes, recently found in several locations, were DNA tested and proved to be the oldest grapes in the world, dating back to 1200 BC. The Cannonau wine is made with these grapes and may qualify as the mother of all the European wines.

From Neolithic times until the Roman Empire, the Nuragic civilisation took shape on the island. Still today, more than 9,000 Nuraghe survive. It is speculated that, among others, the Shardana people landed in Sardinia coming from the eastern Mediterranean. Shardana had joined the Shekelesh and others to form the coalition of the Sea Peoples, but were defeated by Ramesses III around 1180 BC in Egypt. Shardana and Shekelesh were also called by the Egyptians as the "people from the faraway islands", implying that Shardana were already residents of Sardinia at the time of the Egyptian expedition. This assertion holds some truth; in fact most of the tombe dei giganti have a tombstone shaped like a ship vertically dug into the ground, bearing witness to their sea travelling activities. According to some linguistic studies, the town of Sardis in (Lydia) would have been their starting point from which they would have reached the Tyrrhenian Sea, dividing into what were to become the Sardinians and the Etruscans.

However most theories regarding the original population of Sardinia have been formulated prior to genetics research and in the traditional frame of east-west movements. Genetics seem to show Sardinia's population to be genetically quite distant from their neighbours. This is principally due to genetic drift, though other reasons, such as ties with pre-Indo-European Neolithic peoples may also have contributed to this distance.

The density, extensiveness and sheer size of the architectural remains from the Neolithic period, points to a considerable population of the island.

Beginning around 1000 BC, Phoenician mariners established several ports of trade on the Sardinian coast. In 509 BC, war broke out between the native Nuragic people and the Phoenician settlers. The settlers called for help from Carthage, and the island became a province in the Carthaginian Empire. In 238 BC, after being defeated by the Roman Republic during the First Punic War, Carthage ceded Sardinia to Rome. During the Roman period, the geographer Ptolemy noted that it was inhabited by the following peoples, from north to south: the Tibulati and the Corsi, the Coracenses, the Carenses and the Cunusitani, the Salcitani and the Lucuidonenses, the Æsaronenses, the Æchilenenses (also called Cornenses), the Rucensi, the Celsitani and the Corpicenses, the Scapitani and the Siculensi, the Neapolitani and the Valentini, the Solcitani and the Noritani. Ptol. III, 3.

From 456 - 534, Sardinia was a part of the short-lived kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa, until it was reconquered by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. During this time a considerable amount of Germanic Vandals and Iranic Alans settled on the island. Under the Byzantines, the imperial representative was a judge who governed from the southern city of Caralis. Byzantine rule was practically nonexistent in the mountainous Barbagia region in the eastern part of the island, and an independent kingdom persisted there from the sixth through ninth centuries.

Beginning in the eighth century, Arabs and Berbers began raiding Sardinia. Especially after the conquering of Sicily in 832, the Byzantines were unable to effectively defend their most distant province, and the provincial judge assumed independent authority. To provide for local defence, he divided the island into four giudicati, Gallura, Logudoro, Arborea, and Caralis. By 900, these districts had become four independent constitutional monarchies. At various times, these fell under the sway of Genoa and Pisa. In 1323, the Kingdom of Aragon began a campaign to conquer Sardinia; the giudicato of Arborea successfully resisted this and for a time came to control nearly the entire island, but its last ruler William III of Narbonne, was eventually defeated by the Aragonese in the decisive Battle of Sanluri, June 30, 1409. The native population of the city of Alghero (S'Alighera in Sardinian, L'Alguer in Catalan) was expelled and the city repopulated by the Catalan invaders, whose descendants still speak Catalan. After the merge of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, Sardinia was incorporated into the newly created national entity, Spain.

Under Spain, Sardinians were regularly employed on the royal Spanish fleet. On October 7, 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, Sardinian mariners on Board the admiralship of Infante Don John of Austria, half brother of Felipe II, boarded the Turkish admiralship, overpowered the crew, and cut off the head of a Turkish admiral. The sight of the admiral's head on a spear put such a fear in the heart of the Turks, that they abandoned the fight and completely surrendered to Christians. This was the first time Turks lost out to Europeans signalling a trend of military decline and defeats from which Turks never recovered.

Kingdom of Sardinia

In 1718 Sardinia became an 'independent' vassal kingdom under the House of Savoy, rulers of Piedmont.

In 1792, Jean-Paul Marat, son of a Sardinian father from Cagliari and a Swiss mother, was one of the triumvirate leading the French Revolution. In 1793, Sardinians rebelled, demanding autonomy in exchange for helping to defeat French invasion forces. Autonomy was granted in the combined kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, but after the French threat to the kingdom lessened, the king took back his authority.

In 1860, Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Sardinia became also the first King of Italy after conquering the rest of the peninsula.

Prehistory

In 1979 human remains were found that were dated to 150,000 BC. The first humans to settle in Gallura and Northern Sardinia probably came from Italian peninsula, possibly Tuscany. The central region may have been populated by people arriving from the Iberian Peninsula through the Balearic Islands.

Prehistoric arrowheads (3rd millennium BC) and sculptures of the Mediterranean Mother Goddess (now in the Archeological Museum of Cagliari) were retrieved which demonstrate a well developed industry of stone carving.

Already in the Stone Age, Monte Arci played an important role. The old volcano was one of the central places where obsidian was found and worked for cutting tools and arrowheads. Even now the volcanic glass can be found on the sides of the mountain.

The Archaeological Museum of Sassari displays ceramics from the Copper or Aneolithic Age (2600 BC).

The era of the nuraghi

The prehistorical era of Sardinia is characterised by the typical structures in stone that are called Nuraghe. There are more than 8000 of these structures, more or less complex. The most famous is the complex of Barumini in the province of Cagliari. The Nuraghe were mainly built in the period from about 1800 to 1200 BC, though many were used until the Roman period. Next to that holy water places have been built (for example Santa Cristina, Sardara) and the grave structures called Dolmen. It is known that the Sardinians already had contact with the Myceneans, who traded with the West Mediterranean.

The alleged connection with the Shardana, the sea people that invaded Egypt has not been proven. Tombs (Tombe dei giganti) have tombstones shaped like a sinking ship, probably witness to a tragedy on sea expeditions. Euboians, the first Greeks to navigate westwards, called the island Hyknousa (later latinized in Ichnus(s)a). The Nora stone has been seen as proof that the island was called Sharden by the Phoenicians, and from there it derived the name Sardinia.

Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans in Sardinia

From the 8th century BC, Phoenicians founded several cities and strongholds on Sardinia; Tharros, Bithia, Sulcis, Nora and Karalis (Cagliari). The Phoenicians came originally from Lebanon and traded in the Mediterranean. They settled everywhere in the region. Sardinia had a special position because it was central in the western Mediterranean between Carthage, Spain, the Rhone river and the Etruscan civilization area. The mining area around Iglesias was important for the metals (lead and zinc). The cities were founded on strategic points, often peninsulas or islands near estuaries, easy to defend and natural harbours. After the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians took over control in that part of the Mediterranean, around 550 BC. They expanded their influence to the eastern and southern coast from Bosa to Karalis, including a wide fraction of the respective mainland. The cities were administrated by plenipotentiaries called Sufetes, which stressed the growing of grain and cereals.

In 240, in the course of the First Punic War, the Carthaginian mercenaries on the island revolted and gave the Romans, who some years earlier had defeated the Carthaginians in the sea off Olbia and had occupied Sulci, the opportunity to land on Sardinia and occupy it. In 238 BC the Romans took over the whole island, without meeting any resistance. They took over an existing developed infrastructure and urbanized culture (at least in the plains). Together with Sicily it formed one of the main granaries of Rome until the Romans conquered Egypt.

A revolt, led by two Sardo-Punic nobles, broke out after the crushing Roman defeat at Cannae (216 BC). A Roman army of 23,000 men, under Titus Manlius Torquatus, met the Carthaginian-Sardinian allied forces in the south of the island, defeating them and killing 12,000 men. The so-called Sardi Pelliti ("Fur-covered Sardinians") living in the impervious mountains of the interior resisted the Roman colonization for more than a century, Marcus Caecilius Metellus subduing them only in 127 BC.

Under the Roman domination, the Sardinian language gradually came under the strong influence of Latin, turning eventually into a Romance tongue. The Phoenician-Punic culture remained very strong under the Romans until the first centuries AD. Tharros, Nora, Bithia, Antas and Monte Sirai are now important archaeological monuments where architecture and city planning can be studied.

During the Roman period, the geographer Ptolemy noted that Sardinia was inhabited by the following peoples, from north to south: the Tibulati and the Corsi, the Coracenses, the Carenses and the Cunusitani, the Salcitani and the Lucuidonenses, the Æsaronenses, the Æchilenenses (also called Cornenses), the Rucensi, the Celsitani and the Corpicenses, the Scapitani and the Siculensi, the Neapolitani and the Valentini, the Solcitani and the Noritani. Ptol. III, 3.

The Middle Ages

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Sardinia was subject to several conquests. In 456, the Vandals, coming from North Africa, occupied the coastal cities of the island. A brief Eastern Roman reconquest did not last longly, and the Vandals imposed garrisons guarded by African auxiliaries, like the Mauri of what was later called Barbagia, whose troublesome presence lasted probably for centuries. In 534 the small Vandal forces surrendered immediately to the Byzantines when news of the Vandal collapse; thenceforth the island was part of the Byzantine Empire, included in the African prefecture. The local governor sat in Caralis. During the Gothic Wars much of the island fell easily to the Ostrogoths, but an army sent from Carthage and the final fall of German resistance in the mainland reassured the Byzantine control.

Starting from 705-706, the Saracens from North Africa (recently conquered by the Arab armies) harassed the population of the coastal cities. News about the political situation of Sardinian in the following centuries are scarce. Due to Saracen attacks, in the 9th century Tharros was abandoned in favor of Oristano, after more than 1800 years of occupation; Caralis and numerous other coastal centres suffered the same fate. There are news of another massive Saracen sea attack in 1015 from Spain, led by one Mujahid (Latinized in Museto), who established a colony in the north in 1018-1028. Pope Benedict VIII asked the aid of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa in the struggle against the Arabs.

From the mid-11th century the Giudicati ("held by judges") appeared. The title of giudice ("judge") was an heir of that of the Byzantine governor after the creation of the Exarchate of Africa in 582 (Prases or Judex Provinciae). In the 8th-9th centuries the four partes depending from Caralis grow increasingly independent, the Byzantines being totally cut off from the Tyrrhenian Sea by the Muslim conquest of Sicily in 827. A letter of Pope Nicholas I of 864 mentions for the first time the "Sardinian judges", their autonomy now clear in a later letter by Pope John VIII, which defined them "princes".

At the dawn of the judicial era the Sardinia had some 330,000 inhabitants, of which 120,000 free. These were subjected to the authority of local curators (administrators), in turn subjected to the judge (who also administrated justice and was the commander of the army). The church was also powerful, and at this time it had completely abandoned the Eastern Rite. The arrival of Benedictines and other monks boosted the agriculture in a land which was to be extremely underdeveloped.

There were four giudicati: Logudoro, Cagliari, Arborea and Gallura. Often warring one against the other, they made a great number of commercial concessions to the Pisanes (who established a fortress in the Giudicato of Cagliari in 1216) and the Genoese, who soon became the true masters of the Sardinian economy. The first victim was the Giudicato of Cagliari, destroyed by an alliance of the Pisane and the other three Giudicati in 1258.

In 1259, Logudoro was divided between the family of Bas Serra of Arborea and the Doria family of Genoa. In 1288 Pisa acquired the Giudicato of Gallura. Sassari declared itself a philo-Genoese free commune in the same period. In the early 14th century much of the eastern Sardinia, Cagliari included, as under Pisan authority.

The Giudicato of Arborea survived until 1420. The most remarkable Sardinian figure of the Middle Ages, Eleonora d'Arborea, was co-ruler of that reign in the late 14th century: she laid the foundations for the laws that remained valid until 1827, the Carta de Logu.

Aragonese and Spanish rules

In 1323 the Aragonese under Peter, son of King James II, disembarked near Iglesias, in southern Sardinia. The Pisane intervened but were defeated both by sea and by land, and were forced to leave the Cagliari area as well as Gallura, maintaining only their castle in Carali. In 1353 Mariano III of Arborea, allied with the Doria family, waged war against the Aragonese, defeating them at Decimum and besieging Sassari, but unable to capture Cagliari. The Peace of Sanluri (1355) ushered in a period of tranquillity, but hostilities were resumed in 1395, with Arborea initially able to capture much of the Island. However, in 1409 the Aragonese crushed a Genoese fleet coming in support the Sardinians, and destroyed the Giudicato army at the Battle of Sanluri. Oristano, the Arborean capital, fell on March 29, 1410. The last giudice of Arborea sold his remaing territories in 1420, in exchange for 100,000 florins.

The watchtowers all along the coast are called Aragonese towers and served to protect the island against the Arab incursions. Some of these towers were built with the stones of the Phoenician cities because these lay on strategic sites. A nice example of reuse for secular and ecclesiastical architecture can also be found in the church of Santa Giusta where the old city of Othoca had been.

The loss of the independence, the firm Aragonese (later Spanish) rule, with the introduction of a sterile feudalism, as well as the discovery of the Americas, provoked an unstoppable decline of Sardinia. A short period of resurgence occurred under the local noble Leonardo Alagon, marquess of Oristano, who managed to defeat the vice royal army in the 1470s but was later crushed at the Battle of Macomer (1478), ending any further hope of independence for the island. The unceasing attacks from North African pirates and a series of plagues (from 1582, 1652 and 1655) further worsened the situation. In 1637 a French fleet sacked Oristano.

From the kingdom of Sardinia until the present day

The treaty of Utrecht (1713) assigned Sardinia to the Austrian Habsburgs and Sicily to the Piedmontese Savoyards. Philip V of Spain however recovered the island in 1717, but for territorial convenience the European powers assigned Sardinia to the Savoys and Sicily to Emperor Charles VII.

Until the Unification of Italy in 1861, Sardinia and Piedmont were joined in the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1802 King Victor Emmanuel I was ousted from Piedmont by the French army, and four years later moved his court to Cagliari: the brief Republic declared that year, soon thwarted by the Savoy army, was the sole concrete attempt of independence from the Sardinians. The King returned to Turin in 1814. In the early 19th century the situation of the island was the following: 99% of illiterates, absence of any developed economy or trade, cities and forests abandoned. The development of the infrastructure was slow, as the Piedmontese initially did little to improve the conditions of the population. Under King Carlo Felice, a main road, still bearing his name, was built from south (Cagliari) to north (Sassari), while the universities of the two centres were enhanced; however, the few riches remained in the hands of a restricted number of barons and clergymen, banditism attracted a large number inhabitants, and the force immigration of Corsi, Ligurians and Maltese could do little to solve the demographics void. The concession to Sardinia of the same rights than Piedmont in 1847, under King Charles Albert, was of little help.

In 1883 the first trains travelled between Cagliari and Sassari and under Mussolini the swamps around Oristano were laid dry and the foundation of the most successful agrarian community was laid, Arborea. Mussolini also founded Carbonia, the centre of the mining activity. In 1927 the province of Nuoro was created, and works to dry the numerous waste lands favoured the arrival of immigrants. World War II saw Sardinia as the theater of minor activities, but the main event was the successful fight against malaria, obtained also with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation. Sardinia was declared an autonomous region, with some special tax raising and cultural privileges, in 1947. First regional elections were held on May 8, 1949.

After the war, coal decreased in importance and that of tourism increased. Many efforts to create jobs have failed because of the high costs of transport that could not compensate the cheap labour.

Today Sardinia is still an underdeveloped region, whose history is still visible in language and culture. Noticeable is also the difference between coastal regions and the inland. Coastal regions have always been more open to outside influences. Nowadays Sardinia is most known for the northern coasts and island (La Maddalena, Costa Smeralda) and the coast near Cagliari because these are easily reached by ship and by plane.

Go back to the Orosei Gulf web page or visit the other thematic web pages about Sardinia:

History of Sardinia

Sardinian language

Geography of Sardinia