As the Roman Empire was falling apart, a Germanic tribe known as the Vandals along with a Scythian tribe originating from the European Steppe known as the Alans took over Sicily for a relatively brief period beginning in 440 AD under the rule of their king Geiseric, forming the Kingdom of the Vandals. The Vandals and Alans gained a monopoly on the Mediterranean grain trade during their monarchical reign, with all grain taxes being monitored by them. Due to the Western Roman Empire being too preoccupied with war in Gaul, when the Vandals & Alans started invading Sicily in 440, the Romans could not respond. Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II sent a failed expeditionary force to deal with them in 441, which ended in a Vandal-Alan counter-victory. However, they soon lost these newly acquired possessions, except for one toehold in Lilybaeum, to Odoacer (an Arian Christian Barbarian statesman & general of possible East Germanic & Hunnic descent, and client king under Zeno whose reign over Italy marked the Fall of the Western Roman Empire) in 476 and completely to the Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily by Theodoric the Great which began in 488; although the Goths were Germanic, Theodoric sought to revive Roman culture and government and allowed freedom of religion. In contrast to the prior Carthaginian, Syracusan (Dorian) and Roman Empires which ruled Sicily in the past, Sicily did not serve as a distinct province or administrative region under Germanic control, although it did retain a certain amount of autonomy. The Gothic War took place between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantine Empire (with its capital-city based at Constantinople, modern Istanbul), and during the reign of Justinian I, Sicily was brought back under Greco-Roman rule under the military expeditions of Byzantine generals Flavius Belisarius and Narses, resulting in Byzantine-Greek language and religion being embraced by the majority of the population. It was Syracuse where the Byzantine Emperor Constans II desired to move his capital in 663 AD, a decision which eventually led to his assassination. Sicily remained under autonomous stable Byzantine rule as the Theme/Province of Sicily (Theme (Byzantine district)) for several peaceful centuries, until an invasion by Arab Muslims (Aghlabids from the Banu Tamim Clan) in the 9th century. Besides Sicily, the Theme or province of Sicily also included the adjacent region of Calabria in Mainland Italy. The capital city of Byzantine Sicily was Syracuse. The province was looked after by the imperial governor known as a Praetor, and was militarily protected under a general by the title of Dux. Sicily itself was divided into many districts known as a Turma. The Byzantine Exarch of Ravennan Italy named Theophylact, between 702 and 709, originally came from Sicily. After he got promoted into the Exarchate, Theophylact marched from Sicily to Rome for unknown reasons, a decision which angered the local Roman soldiers living there, however the newly elected Pope John VI, was able to calm them down. While Theophylact was still Exarch, Byzantine Emperor Justinian II seized all the leading citizens and officials of Ravenna at a local banquet, and dragged them abroad a ship to Constantinople. He sentenced all but one of the Ravennan captives to death, the exception being Archbishop Felix, who was permanently blinded instead. This was due to a recent rebellion which Ravenna took part in, in 695. Justinian II later sacked Ravenna, weakening the Exarchate in charge of it. Theophylact was not a victim of the catastrophe, but was the first Exarch to experience a weakened Ravenna. Theophylact possibly moved back to Sicily after he retired from the Exarchate in 709. Theophylact might have also been the Strategos of Sicily from 700 to 710. The Strategos of Sicily was also able to exercise some control over the autonomous duchies of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi, depending on the local political situation or faction at the time.
The Aghlabid invasions were in part caused by the Byzantine-Sicilian military commander Euphemius, who invited the Aghlabids to aid him in his rebellion against the imperial governor of Sicily in 826 AD. A similar situation happened a century prior, when the imperial governor of Sicily (Sergios), had declared a Byzantine official from Constantinople by the name of Basil Onomagoulos (regnal name Tiberius) as rival emperor, when false news reached Sicily that Constantinople had fallen to the Umayyads. When Emperor Leo the Syrian sent an administrative official named Paul to Sicily, the people and army of Syracuse surrendered Basil and his rebels up to him, leading to the beheading of Basil, while the former governor Sergios was able to escape to the parts of Mainland Italy controlled by the Lombards. Another rebellion took place between the years 781–793, when the aristocratic governor of Sicily, Elpidius, was accused of conspiring against Empress Irene in favour of Nikephoros. After Elpidius's forces were militarily defeated by Empress Irene's large fleet dispatched in Sicily, he, along with his lieutenant, the dux of Calabria named Nikephoros, defected to the Abbasid Caliphate, where he was posthumously acknowledged as rival emperor. After losing another military expedition, this time against Asia Minor with the help of the Abbasids, he advised the Abbasid Emir of Mesopotamia, Abd al-Malik ibn Salih, to "throw away his silk and put on his armour", warning him against the aggressive new reign of Nikephoros I. The Muslim conquest was a see-saw affair; the local population resisted fiercely and the Arabs suffered considerable dissension and infighting among themselves during this process. Not until 965 was the island's conquest successfully completed by the Fatimid Caliphate, with Syracuse in particular resisting almost to the end (Siege of Syracuse (877-878)). Jawhar the Sicilian, the Fatimid general that led the conquest of Egypt, under Caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah, was born and grew up in Ragusa, Sicily. Jawhar served as viceroy of Egypt until 973, consolidating Fatimid control over North Africa, and laying the foundations for Cairo.
The first phase of Muslim rule began with the conquests of the third Aghlabid Emir Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya, and consolidated with the reign of the ninth Emir Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya after the conquest of Taormina. The first attempt to capture Syracuse was under general Asad ibn al-Furat, although it ended in a Byzantine victory. A combination of Persian and Andalusian troops helped to capture the Island between 830 and 831. After a revolt was suppressed, the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mansur Billah appointed a member of the Kalbid dynasty, Al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Kalbi, as First Emir of Sicily. The Kalbids ruled Sicily from 948 to 1053. Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis, fourth ruler of the Zirid Sanhaja dynasty in North Africa, attempted to annex the island for the Zirids, but his attempts failed. The new Arab rulers initiated land reforms, which in turn increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, a dent to the dominance of the landed estates. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems through Qanats, introducing oranges, lemons, pistachio, and sugarcane to Sicily. Ibn Hawqal, a Baghdadi merchant who visited Sicily in 950, commented that a walled suburb called the Kasr (the palace) was the center of Palermo, with the great Friday mosque on the site of the later Roman Catholic cathedral. The suburb of Al-Khalisa (Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison. Ibn Hawqual reckoned there were 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops. By 1050, Palermo had a population of 350,000, making it one of the largest cities in Europe, behind Moorish-Spain's capital Córdoba and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, which had populations over 450–500,000. Palermo's population dropped to 150,000 under Norman rule. By 1330 Palermo's population had declined to 51,000, possibly due to the inhabitants of the region being deported to other regions of Norman Sicily, or to the Norman County of Apulia and Calabria. The local population conquered by the Muslims were Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians, but there were also a significant number of Jews. Christians and Jews were tolerated in Muslim Sicily as dhimmis, and had to pay the Jizya poll tax, and Kharaj land tax, but were exempt from the Zakat alms-giving tax Muslims had to pay. Many Jews immigrated to Sicily during Muslim rule, but left after the Normans arrived.
In the 11th century, the mainland southern Italian powers were hiring Norman mercenaries, who were Christian descendants of the Vikings; it was the Normans under Roger I (of the Hauteville dynasty) who conquered Sicily from the Muslims over a period of thirty years until finally controlling the entire island by 1091 as the County of Sicily. In 1130, Roger II founded the Norman Kingdom of Sicily as an independent state with its own Parliament, language, schooling, army and currency, while the Sicilian culture evolved distinct traditions, clothing, linguistic changes, cuisine and customs not found in mainland Italy. A great number of families from northern Italy began settling in Sicily during this time, with some of their descendants forming distinct communities that survive to the present day, such as the Lombards of Sicily. Other migrants arrived from southern Italy, as well as Normandy, southern France, England and other parts of northern Europe.
The Siculo-Norman rule of the Hauteville dynasty continued until 1198, when Frederick II of Sicily, the son of a Siculo-Norman queen and a Swabian-German emperor ascended the throne. In fact, it was during the reign of this Hohenstaufen king Frederick II, that the poetic form known as a sonnet was invented by Giacomo da Lentini, the head Poet, Teacher and Notary of the Sicilian School for Poetry. Frederick II was also responsible for the Muslim settlement of Lucera. His descendants governed Sicily until the Papacy invited a French prince to take the throne, which led to a decade-and-a-half of French rule under Charles I of Sicily; he was later deposed in the War of the Sicilian Vespers against French rule, which put the daughter of Manfred of Sicily – Constance II and her husband Peter III of Aragon, a member of the House of Barcelona, on the throne. Their descendants ruled the Kingdom of Sicily until 1401. Following the Compromise of Caspe in 1412 the Sicilian throne passed to the Iberian monarchs from Aragon and Castile.
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