An Armchair Traveller's History Of Apulia - Plot & Excerpts
R. dall Pozzo, “Historia della Sacra Religione Militare di San Giovanni” THE COAST NEAREST the Murgia dei Trulli was known as the Difesa di Malta (Challenge of Malta), because it was so well guarded by the Knights of Malta. These were the Knights Hospitallers, the warrior monks who had defended Crusader Jerusalem, still waging an unceasing war on the Infidel. In Italy they were popularly known as ‘Hierosolomitan’ or ‘Jerusalem’ Knights. Even after the decline of the Ottoman Empire ended the threat of invasion, Apulia suffered from raids by North African and Albanian pirates, and the brethren’s policing of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas was of vital importance, often saving the crews of Apulian merchantmen and fishing boats from enslavement. Locals saw the corn, wine and oil that went out to Malta by felucca as a very good investment indeed. By the mid-eighteenth century raids on the Apulian coast had ceased, but they began again after Napoleon evicted the Knights from Malta in 1798, continuing well into the 1830s.
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