The “Turcus e Morus” Museum (Museum of Barbarian Raids in Sardinia) was opened on 6/29/01, in the premises of the town’s former Monte Granatico, a building constructed in the early 1800s. The unique exhibition was conceived by journalist, writer and free researcher Gino Camboni, and set up by two professors from the University of Cagliari (Prof. B. Fois and Prof. G. Pellegrini). By realizing it, it was intended to remedy the absolute absence of exhibition documentation, usable by the general public, on the centuries-old encounter-clash between Sardinia and the Islamic world, which began after the fall of Carthage to Arab hands and exposed the island to the threat and constant raids of Muslim conquerors and pirates. The museum intends to offer itself as an opportunity and a place where we can discuss that difficult past with detachment and objectivity, and project ourselves into a multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious future, recounting those events and fears, those ancient hatreds between Christians and Muslims pitted against each other in the “holy war,” and the prejudices that resulted.
The first exhibit unfolded in four thematic areas-FACTS, MEN, SHIPS, TOWERS-illustrated through 35 large graphic and photographic panels arranged around three philological models: a Sardinian militiaman or towerman, a slave, and a Barbary pirate. In 2012, the Administration in collaboration with Cagliari’s ISEM CNR became the promoter of a complete reorganization of the museum in a multimedia key, but faithful to the original philosophy: a museum built not so much around objects as around ideas. Instead of things, therefore, thanks to the sophisticated didactic tools offered by new technologies, the focus was on presenting suggestions, memories, fears. So that the museum can tell the past, make it come alive and known to visitors, encouraging their direct interaction with the information received.
The choice of such a special setting fell on Gonnostramatza, although far from the coast, because of a very rare inscription in the Sardinian language that is walled in the chancel of the church of St. Paul, the ancient parish church of the vanished village of Serzela, a little less than two kilometers from the town: À V de arbili MDXV / esti istada isfatta / sa vila de Uras de / manus de Turcus e / Morus, effudi capitan / de Morus Barbarossa. (“On April 5, 1515, the villa of Uras was destroyed at the hands of Turks and Moors, and captain of the Moors was Barbarossa.”).
By the names Turcus and Morus, Barbary pirates and generally people of Arab origin are still called in Sardinian. Captaining them, according to the author of the epigraph, was the notorious Khayr ad-Dīn or his brother Urūǵ, fearsome Turkish privateers of Greek origin, both known by the nickname “Barbarossa.” Painting or dictating the epigraph, which would appear to be a votive offering for escaped danger, must have been one of the inhabitants of the ancient villa of Uras, twenty-five kilometers south of Oristano, who managed to escape the assault and take refuge further inland, in the now long-lost village of Serzela, presumably taken in by relatives or friends.
