ABSTRACT
One of the points mentioned in chapter two was that many key figures among the kingdom’s ruling elite and administration were either Muslims, converts from Islam or Arabic-speaking Christians. In addition, we know that the record books for the fiscal administration were kept in Arabic and that many of its charters were composed in Arabic too. Therefore, there is a clear sense in which Arabic was one of the most important languages of the kingdom at the highest level. However, it was also argued that the difficulties in separating propagandist elements in the art and architecture of the royal palaces, some of which could be interpreted in terms of ideological accommodation, from fledgling and more practical attempts by a newly-united kingdom to establish an administration over a multilingual and multireligious society allow us only to speculate about the true nature of the relationships between the kings, their Muslim subjects and ArabIslamic culture on the island. Thus, it is equally difficult to gauge how steeped in Arab-Islamic culture the kings may actually have been, or the extent to which this changed over time. However, it is possible to piece together elements of their education, upbringing and the influence of those around them at court that may have conditioned their outlook.
