Procopius’ Barbarikinoi and Gregory the Great’s Barbaricini: Mauri and Sardinians in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries A.D.

Procopius and Gregory the Great both report the existence of the Barbarikinoi - Barbaricini in Sardinia during the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., located in the central region known as Barbaria. These Barbarikinoi-Barbaricini should be identified with the African people known as the Mauri, who were deported to Sardinia while the island was part of the African regnum Vandalorum. Moving beyond past interpretations that localized this deported Mauri population in the Sulcis area of southwestern Sardinia and in the hinterland of Cagliari, today’s understandings tend to connect the Barbaricini to the civitate Barbaria, delimited by the Romans since the third to second centuries B.C., which absorbed the three thousand Mauri brought to the island. The geography of Barbaria has been shown to have been marked to the west and south by Roman military settlements that went on to maintain an urban dimension during the Vandal and Byzantine epochs. At the time of Mauritius Tiberius, the Barbaricini signed a peace treaty with the Roman Empire and were recognized as a dukedom held by the dux Ospitone. Research has confirmed the resilient and open cultural attitudes of the Sardinian population towards the Roman Empire. It was characterized by the prevailing palaeo-Sardinian onomastics that persisted into the Early Middle Ages of the Sardinian Judgeships. Nuragic settlements continued to be exploited, but with new functions for their monumental buildings, such as the Nuraghi and Giant’s Tombs which were often transformed into mausolea. Local, stamp-decorated, impasto pottery is found together with fine wares mainly imported from Africa.