Caltavuturo (
Sicilian: ''Caltavuturu'') is a town and ''
comune
The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...
'' in the
Metropolitan City of Palermo
The Metropolitan City of Palermo ( it, Città metropolitana di Palermo; scn, Cità metrupulitana di Palermu) is a metropolitan city in Sicily, Italy. Its capital is the city of Palermo. It replaced the Province of Palermo and comprises the city ...
,
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
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, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
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, demographi ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
. The neighboring comunes are
Polizzi Generosa
Polizzi Generosa ( Sicilian: ''Pulizzi'') is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Palermo on the island of Sicily, southern Italy. The town sits in the hills at above sea level.
History
The site of Polizzi shows signs of human ...
,
Scillato and
Sclafani Bagni.
History
According to many scholars, the name and origin of the town are traced back to the period of
Arab rule. According to
Ibn al-Athir
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ash-Shaybānī, better known as ʿAlī ʿIzz ad-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr al-Jazarī ( ar, علي عز الدین بن الاثیر الجزري) lived 1160–1233) was an Arab or Kurdish historian ...
(''
The Complete History'', VII.370.5–7), in
AH 268 (881/82
CE), the
Aghlabid commander Abu Thawr was defeated by the
Byzantines (probably commanded by the ''
strategos
''Strategos'', plural ''strategoi'', Latinized ''strategus'', ( el, στρατηγός, pl. στρατηγοί; Doric Greek: στραταγός, ''stratagos''; meaning "army leader") is used in Greek to mean military general. In the Helleni ...
'' Mosilikes) and his was army annihilated, with only seven men surviving. The locality was later named in Arabic ''Qalʿat Abī Ṯawr'' ("Castle of Abu Thawr"), which is the origin of the modern name. Others instead maintain that the name derives from the Arabic word "qal'at" (fortress) and the Sicilian "vuturu" (vulture) meaning of "fortress of vultures." The town existed under Byzantine rule pre Arab conquest as Aziz Ahmad in “A Islamic History of Sicily” ( edinburgh university press 1975) states that in 852 Abbas raided Caltavuturo in the northern part of the Island and took many prisoners who were sold as slaves,
The town was the site of the so-called
Caltavuturo massacre
The Caltavuturo massacre took place on January 20, 1893, in Caltavuturo in the Province of Palermo (Sicily), when during the celebration of Saint Sebastian, some 500 peasants returning from the symbolic occupation of 250 hectares of communal la ...
on 20 January 1893, when local authorities killed 13 and wounded 21 peasants that had occupied communal land that they claimed was theirs.
L’eccidio di «San Sebastiano»
La Sicilia, 8 February 2009
References
Municipalities of the Metropolitan City of Palermo
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