Malta Today

            This week’s blog post will be on the archipelago, which Gozo is a part of, and its current state. The Maltese archipelago is made up of Malta, Gozo, Comino, Cominotto and Fifla, however most of the populations lives on the islands of Malta and Gozo. The region is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, 59 miles off the cost of Sicily to the north and 194 miles off the cost of Tunisia to the west. All five of the islands together make up roughly 95 square miles. Gozo is the most forested of all the islands and has the most farming done on it then any of the other islands. The thin soil and scarce groundwater makes for large amounts of runoff, which poses a problem for archeological areas. For this reason terracing is used on Gozo to contain erosion in the Ggantija sites. The Wild life of the island is largely insects and migratory birds. 

            The public means of transportation in the large towns is the local bussing system. Ferry services connect the five islands; and the beaches, coves, grottoes, and fishing villages are all connected by roadways. In some places on the island the land fall abruptly into the sea over rocks and cliffs creating beautiful views with medieval fortifications. The typical rainy season is from October to February; however the climate remains mild year round. The islands capital is Valletta, which is on the island of Malta and is also where the Grand Harbor is located. The population of the region was 369,451 in 1999, with 341906 living on Malta, 27545 on Gozo and the rest living on the other 3 islands. That year 4826 babies were born giving the reason a birth rate of 13.1 per thousand. This growing population makes the region one of the densest in the world, second only to Singapore.  

            The spoken language is Maltese. It is the only European language that is in the Afro-Asiatic family. This is due to its close relationship to forms of Arabic spoke in Libya and Tunisia. The language is heavily influenced by Sicilian and is written with a twenty-nine-letter alphabet. The language is universally understood by the citizens and has a minimal dialect variation. The more educated of the Maltese people often speak English as well as Italian. The national symbol is that of Saint Paul. He is credited with converting the Maltese to Christianity. The symbolism is a strong reference to how the islands continued to fight in the crusades long after most Europeans abandoned them. The other major symbols used throughout the island are that of Roman Catholicism, Dolphins, the Maltese Cross, a strong European identity, and that of siege mentality.

            The Maltese people have a combined culture with aspects taken from the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Normans, Sicilians, Swabians, Arogonese, Castilian, the Knights, and the British. They share every little with the people of northern Africa that contributed much to their language however. The ethnic identity of the Maltese people is relatively homogeneous by modern standards. A small Jewish community in the region numbers at about one hundred twenty resides on the islands was well as a group of India settlers from Indian at about sixty people.

GOODWIN, S. C. (2001). Malta. In C. R. Ember & M. Ember (Eds.), Countries and Their Cultures (Vol. 3, pp. 1400-1407). New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3401700154&v=2.1&u=msu_main&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w

Leading Up To Excavation

This week’s post will be about the time after the Maltese people lost control of Gozo until the discovery of the archeological site. In 2000 BC, life came crashing down around the Maltese people when an enemy came to Gozo, known as the Destroyers. They dominated the island until roughly 1400 BC, when another group from in Sicily moved to the island. These Sician held Gozo for five centuries, until the Phoenicians came who used the island as a staging post for their trade routes. In 600 BC, the Greeks had a large enough population that they began looking for new territories to inhabit. The Carthaginians supported the Phoenicians in their fight against the Greeks for land control in Italy, Sicily and occupied the island in 480 BC. Under their control the population grew and moved inland on Gozo and establishing the port known as Grand Harbor. In 218 BC, the last Punic War was being fought between the Carthaginians and the Romans and the Maltese people rebelled against Carthaginian rule and declared their loyalty to Rome. The island prospered under Roman rule and in 117 BC, Gozo was given the official status of Municipium and allowed to form autonomous local governments.

When the Roman Empire split in 395 AD, Gozo became occupied by the Goths and the Vandals until in the 6th century when the island fell under the control of the Byzantine Empire for the next four centuries. In 836 AD, the Aghlabid Arabs of North Africa began to raid the island and in 870 AD, Gozo succumbed to Arab rule for the next 220 years. Under Arab rule the cultural of the island drastically changed and set the foundation of modern Maltese. In 1061 AD, the Normans invaded Sicily and defeated the Arab rulers of the Gozo in 1090 AD. Originally the Arabs still living on the island were allowed to stay. However, in 1122 AD, King Roger I of Sicily deported them and established a feudal system. The island became a part of the Kingdom of Sicily and under King Tancred of Sicily; the islands of Malta and Gozo were turned into a fief under the rule of the Count of Malta. In 1194 AD, the Swabian dynasty of Hohenstaufens took control of the islands and the regain became a part of an immense empire stretching from the north to the south of Europe.

In 1266 AD, at the end of the Hohenstaufen rule of Malta, the islands briefly passed on to the French House of d'Anjou. This however, while the Maltese felt protected by the French forces, the ruling government was never popular. In 1275 when the island was sacked, large revolts against the French rule lead to the region falling under the rule of the Spanish House of Aragon from 1284 to 1412. During this time heavy taxes, failing crops, and raids of the islands by Arab forces lead to dissatisfaction of the Maltese. In 1425, they rose up in revolt against Count Gonsalvo Monroy and in 1428; King Alphonso gave governmental control of the islands to the Maltese people under Spanish rule.

In 1522, the Ottoman Empire showed interests in the islands to wage war in Africa, so in 1530, Charles V of Spain granted the islands to the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of St. John in perpetual fiefdom, in exchange for an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon and to fend off the Ottomans. In 1565, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent sent an army of 40,000 to expel the Knights from the Maltese islands. The population of Malta suffered one of the roughest and bloodiest sieges in history.  However, The Ottoman defeat started the turning point in Turkish naval domination, and after the siege the Knights embarked built the new city of Valletta.

The rule of the Knights remained strong until 1798, when the Order saw its revenues and its prestige decline and with the French revolution of 1789, Napoleon was able to capture the islands. In 1814, during the Napoleon wars, the Maltese rebelled against the French occupation of the islands. With Great Britain help in blockading the islands from French reinforcements with the signing of the First Treaty of Paris, The islands were declared to be a part of the British Empire who completed the excavation of the Ggantija ruins in 1827.

Works Cited:

"Maltese." Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. Ed. Timothy L. Gall and Jeneen Hobby. 2nd ed. Vol. 5: Europe. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 298-308. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 22 Mar. 2012.