To understand where we come from and what makes us Sicilians, and to some extent where did the Campisciano originate from, we have to understand the Islands history through time.

Sicily's position, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, lying between Europe and Africa, served as the link between the eastern and western Mediterranean civilisations of the Greek, Latin’s and others, this resulted as sought  possession of foreign powers and the battleground of warring nations.

Sicily’s long history of foreign domination produced an incredible mix of cultures and traditions, the result was that the island was transformed in a cultural sense from the ancient stone age tribes to what it is today, evidence of  this process can be seen in the architecture of buildings dating to those periods with the remarkable works of art still  existing today.
Greek, Roman, Arab, Byzantine, Norman. influences can be found all over the island, some areas for example show strong Arab and Norman influences as found in Palermo today.

The overlapping of culture, language and technology in it’s history moulded the people, the towns, also the countryside landscape was changed through time with the introduction of irrigation and farming techniques and crops such as vines, olives and citrus, that originated from other lands.

The most stable forming period in Sicily history was under the Arab and Norman Swab rules, the island prospered socially and economically, it was during this period that religious tolerance was exercised and the language evolved to the form that can still be found in Malta today, this a mix of vulgar Latin with Sicani Greek, Arab and other dialects mix of the times, it was the central government rule of the Arabs, later that of the Norman’s, that helped to establish a common language. Both The Arabs and Norman’s ruled with an interest in the people rather then that of conquerors to exploit.

This mix produced a unique language that became the foundation of modern Italian during the reign of the Norman’s from the Maltese form to modern Italian. The Swabian Holly Roman Emperor Frederick II was a patron of the Sicilian School of poetry his encouragement saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance Sicilian language. This form was also used exclusively in his court in Palermo, it then found it’s way to Florence in a literary form eventually becoming the Florentine court language
Dante Alighieri under the influence of other poetic works written at the time in the Italo-Sicilian form, adopted the language for his work “La Divina Commedia”  This became the final form of the Italian language spoken today, having had its origins from the court of Frederick II of Sicily