The rise of Norman naval power in the central Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries prompted a seminal shift in the balance of power on the sea. Drawing from Latin, Greek, Jewish and Arabic sources, this book details how the House of Hauteville, particularly under Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, used sea power to accomplish what the Papacy, the German Empire and the Eastern Empire could not: the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily from Islam. The subsequent establishment of an aggressive naval presence on Sicily, first by Roger de Hauteville and then by his son Roger...