This article presents a history of Cagliari, an Italian municipality and the capital city of the island of Sardinia. The territory of the city has been continuously inhabited since at least the Neolithic period. Due to its strategic location in the Mediterranean and natural harbor, the city was prized and highly sought after by a number of Mediterranean empires and cultures.
Etymology
Cagliari was known to the Phoenicians and Carthaginians as Karaly (, ). This was Latinized variously as Carales, Karales, Caralis, and Calares (grammatically plural). Around the 16th century Roderigo Hunno Baeza, a Sardinian humanist, stated that the name "Caralis" had derived from the Greek kárs (, "head"), as Cagliari was the main centre of the island. The Semitist William Gesenius said the name came from Kar Baalis, which in Phoenician meant "city of God." This version was, albeit with some differences, accepted by Giovanni Spano, who claimed that Cagliari derived from the Phoenician name Kar-El, which also means "city of God."
Max Leopold WagnerM. L. Wagner, La lingua sarda, storia, spirito e forma, A. Francke, Bern, 1951, again published by Ilisso, Nuoro, 1997 traced the term to Protosardinian Karalis, reflecting the Sardinian place names of Carale (Austis), Carallai (Sorradile), Karhalis or Karhallis (Carallia) of Pamphylia and Karhalleia of Pisidia (Turkey). The toponym Karalis was connected with such words as cacarallai, criallei, crielle, chirelle, ghirelle (wild chrysanthemum and Macerone) and garuleu, galureu, Galileu (pollen deposited in honey, which is yellow gold), which has affinity with the Etruscan garouleou (wild chrysanthemum).
Francesco Artizzu noticed that the root "kar" in the languages of the Mediterranean peoples meant "stone/rock" and the suffix "al/ar" gave collective value, so the word Karali could be translated as "place of the rock community" or simply "rocky place." As for the plural, Kalares, Artizzu explained that an initial settlement core was joined by other neighboring nuclei, thus increasing the extent of the city. In conclusion, Karalis/Caralis originally most likely had the meaning of "place of community on the rock/yellow or white rock".
Over time the judicial city became the center of what is now the neighborhood of Santa Gilla or Stampace, and in medieval Sardinian was thus called Santa Igia (contraction of Saint Cecilia). With the arrival of Pisans the new citadel on the top of the hill was identified in the documents as Castellum Castri de Kallari and later by the Catalan-Aragonese as Castell de Caller in Catalan. Then on adoption of the Spanish language during Spanish rule the name became Callari and finally in the House of Savoy period the name was simply transliterated into Italian, obtaining the current Cagliari. In the Sardinian language the current name Casteddu identifies the city with the city's fortified castle built during the rule of Pisa. Other scholars think that the name Casteddu is much older, going back to the very beginnings of Roman rule, and is nothing but the translation into Latin of popular Karalis. The two place names survived, the one as the official name of the Municipium (municipality) until today, the other as a literal translation of the Latin which became prevalent in common parlance when pre-Latin languages became extinct in the city and throughout the whole island. An extant fragment by Varro Atacinus, a Latin poet of the 1st century BC mentions: munitus Vicus Caralis, meaning "fortified town of Caralis", Castellum in Vulgar Latin. In any case, the word Casteddu is the direct descendant of the Latin castellum and not a loan from the dialect of Pisa as might suggest the "refounding" of the fortified medieval city. Furthermore, at that time the hill of the castle was named Monti Castru; castru is a Sardinian word that descends from Latin Castrum (military encampment, fort or castle) and means "jagged mountaintop". A local Renaissance writer, Roderigo Hunno Baeza, describes the Roman city, from the ruins that still remained in his time, as an Arx on the hill, from which the Via Sacra descended to the port.Roderigo Hunno Baeza, Caralys Panegyricus, manuscript in Cagliari University Library (16th century)F. Barreca, La civiltà fenicio punica in Sardegna, Carlo Delfino Editore, Sassari 1988Dionogi Scano, Forma Karalis, edizioni 3T, 1989Mauro Podda, La Sardegna e il faggio- Sardegna Antica n° 30
In conclusion, having no certain etymology for the name Cagliari, it probably refers to the naturally fortified hill overlooking the harbor, the main outlet of the southern Campidano plain. The Greek geographer Ptolemy, who lived in the second century A.D., wrote Κάραλις πόλις καὶ ἄκρα, literally "town and fortress of Caralis". The very reason for the existence of this ancient city lies in its being both a powerful military structure to defend the main port of southern Sardinia and a basis for control of the western Mediterranean, as well as the outlet for the grain-growing region and livestock products (cheese, leather), iron, lead, copper and zinc mining from the inland, and of course, the salt that was produced at the great saltworks that surround it.
Prehistory
Some Domus de janas and the remains of huts of the IV - III millennium B.C. discovered in Saint Bartholomew zone on the hill of St. Elias, confirm that the area where the city today stands has been inhabited since Neolithic times. The resources of the sea, ponds, and partly rocky land suitable for cereal and some horticultural crops ensured the livelihood of the people during the peaceful Pre-Nuragic period. Artefacts from the Monte Claro culture, named after the eponymous hill in Cagliari, date back to the Copper Age and spread throughout the island.Giovanni Lilliu, La civiltà dei Sardi dal Paleolitico all'età dei Nuraghi "Nuoro" 2003- Archaeological finds from the Bronze Age, such as Aegean pottery found in the nuraghe Antigori of Sarroch, inspired the hypothesis that the Nuragics settled in Cagliari, entertained intense commercial and cultural ties with the Mycenaeans, and are a testimony that their ports were already vital and busy. Inside the urban area no nuragic building was found until 2012, when in Monte Claro some ruins of a sacred well were discovered. All around the city, east and west, there are Nuraghes, Giants' graves and Holy wells.
Phoenician colony and Punic era
Krly or Karel started as a store or trading post around the tenth century BC when the Phoenicians began to frequent the area of the Gulf of Cagliari. A passage in the De Bello Gildonico of Claudian, who described it in the fourth century AD, says that Cagliari was founded by powerful Tyre, a city of the Lebanon, which in the early centuries of the first millennium BC experienced its most prosperous period as a commercial power between the eastern and western Mediterranean, and also founded the city of Carthage. That was the thalassocracy of Tyre.Sextus Pompeius Festus, De verborum significatu, (Tyria maria) The first nucleus of Phoenician Cagliari seems to have been near the pond of Santa Gilla, but gradually the city center moved more and more to the east until it reached approximately the point where today's Piazza del Carmine is located. During the Punic era, from the end of the 6th century B.C., the city took on the appearance of an authentic urban center and many temples were built, including one dedicated to the goddess Astarte, near the promontory of St. Elias. The town had two cemeteries, a northwestern one corresponding to the necropolis of Tuvixeddu, considered the largest Punic necropolis in the Mediterranean, and a southeastern one located on the hill of Bonaria, while the Tophet, the cremation necropolis where the urns of children were deposited, was in an area now called Campo Scipione-San Paolo.
Roman era
Having become the island's now completely punicized main town, Krly became Roman in 238 BC when Sardinia and Corsica were occupied by the army of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 238 BC, in the aftermath of the First Punic War. The appearance of the town does not seem to have changed much during the long first period of Roman domination. In the following centuries Roman Karalis retained its role as a Sardinian metropolis. On the death of Julius Caesar, citizens remained faithful to his name and sided with his adopted son Octavian Augustus, first against Sextus Pompey, then against Marcus Antonius. After the victory of Octavian there was a long period of political calm and economic boom.
Caralis (or Karales) was the capital of the Roman province of Sardinia and Corsica and was elevated to the rank of Municipium, a result of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey when Caesar himself granted this status in gratitude to the city for its fidelity during the bloody war. All Caralitani obtained Roman citizenship and were enrolled in the tribe Quirina. The territory of the city included the Campidano plain up to modern Sanluri.Attilio Mastino (a cura di), Storia della Sardegna antica, Il Maestrale, Nuoro, 2005
With about 30-20,000 inhabitants Caralis was the largest and most populous city of the island and one of the most important of the western Mediterranean Basin of the Roman Republic, and later of the Roman Empire. The city was equipped with important road links to the main towns of the island such as Sulci, with the coastal road and with that running through the valley of the Cixerri, Olbia and Tibula along the east coast, and Turris and Tibula along the road modeled on the current Carlo Felice, and finally a road through the centre of the island to the north coast.Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti, edited by Peter Wesseling, Amsterdam, 1735, pag.84 The town was also equipped with an amphitheater capable of seating approximately 10,000 spectators, temples, villas and aqueducts that supplied water, sourcing maybe from Domusnovas and Caput Aquas, near Siliqua. But the city was also endowed since the Punic time with numerous and large cisterns dug into the rock to collect rainwater and which can be seen today in various parts of the city. There were at least three cemeteries, one that was the same Punic necropolis of Tuvixeddu, another in the area around the churches of St. Lucifer and San Saturn, and Bonaria hill, and a third along the current Viale Regina Margherita, the burial site of the classiari or detachment of sailors of the fleet of Misenum, which was based at the city port. Along the main road out of the city to Turris, near the Punic necropolis, a mausoleum tomb dedicated to Attilia Pomptilla was built by her husband, Philip Cassio. Known as Viper's Cave, it is decorated with an impressive cycle of Greek and Latin carmina that can be considered the first literary work produced in Sardinia and surviving to the present day, the beginning of the literary history of the island.
Among the main economic activities, a primary industry was salt mining from brine at a site between Caralis and Quartu, still undertaken today. This salt as well as grain, leather (tanned in establishments found near the port) and other products made in Sardinia were exported to other provinces of the empire.
In the Roman period, although administered by the prefect of the province, the city maintained institutions of Carthaginian origin, such as the Sufetes, magistrates that were elected annually until the time of the granting of the "municipium" status. On that occasion, according to some researchers,Piero Meloni, La Sardegna romana, Chiarella, Sassari, 1990 a coin was minted with the names of the last two Sufetes of the city.