The first mistake – If you ask me when the first great mistake in our history dates back, from which everything descends up to the present of Sardinia: both in the political, social, cultural and even economic conditions, I answer that it undoubtedly happened around 1000 BC when the foreigner arrived from the sea, and we let him in.

At that time the foreigners were Phoenician merchants looking for customers. They came from far away: even from Lebanon, a country in the Middle East north of Israel much smaller than Sardinia itself but with enterprising inhabitants skilled in trade (a bit like the Neapolitans of old). They traveled in a caravan once a year in the good season with sailing and rowing ships loaded with exotic junk sometimes made by themselves sometimes taken from the nearby and opulent Egypt of the pharaohs. With the complacency of us natives ecstatic by the offer of trinkets and nannoli, they slowly settled in all the western ports of the island, from the gulf of Cagliari to that of Asinara, first establishing a modest market that over the years became a thriving emporium and then a commercial town in need of space and sustenance.

The end of the Nuragic people – We know how it ended. The Phoenicians, supported by their warlike Carthaginian cousins, attacked and subdued the natives of the rich surrounding areas (such as Mont'e Prama, in the Sinis di Cabras) and incorporated the fertile plain, leaving the Nuragic people only the meager mountains of Barbagia.

Well, do you think that the Sardinians of that time, like those of today, have learned the lesson? Not in your dreams! According to the saying "a nail drives out a nail" in the fight between Carthage and Rome in 238 BC they favored the latter who in return kept us subjugated until 534 AD, imposing on us the cereal monoculture and taking away all the grain produced in our Campidani.

In truth, the Roman State did not end on the date I indicated, it continued under the name of the Byzantine Empire, and lasted with us until around 900 AD, at the edge of the Millennium just passed, with the interruption of the Vandal period from 460 to 534.

“De su cancuru a s'arrabiu”; that is: “from bad to worse”, as they would say in Sardinian in Cabras, my hometown. The rulers who came from Byzantium burdened us with heavy tributes to cover the costs of the war against the Barbarians, the Persians and the Arabs, the new dangerous enemies who threatened Christian Europe.

The Attack of the Arabs – 632 years had passed since Jesus Christ was born in Palestine, and a little less since he preached equality between peoples and mutual love («… you shall love your neighbor as yourself»), when in the immense, arid Arabia a cultured Bedouin merchant called Muhammad (called by us Mahomet), said he had been inspired by God/Allah to write the Koran, the sacred book of Islam.

I have read it three times, and in all 114 “surahs” I have never found the word “love”. Instead, there is the exaltation of the “jihad”, the holy war against the infidels: Christians and Jews; even if, in truth, verse 190-191 of the second “surah” recommends: “… fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not go beyond the limits…”. It does not seem to me that we called or attacked them, when in 711 the Muslims began to attack our coasts, demanding the “jizya”, the war tribute. To defend ourselves we retreated from the coasts, founding inland the towns of Santa Igìa (Cagliari), Oristano, Àrdara and Olbia which became the capitals of the four medieval states.

But, that's another story that I'll tell later.

Francis Caesar Casula

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