Siracusa

CAFISO, OIL, AND SICILY: AN ANCIENT LOVE STORY

There are details, apparently ordinary ones, in the traditional culture of a place that, when read with due attention, tell its true history and identity. This is the case of the “cafiso” — from the Arabic qafiz — a unit of measurement for oil still widely used in Sicily. But how much does a cafiso correspond to? Good question. Each small town has its own calibration: 10.5 litres in some places, 12 in others, 16 in others still. Is that really possible?

Yes, it is possible. Because in pre-unification Sicily there were local units of measurement with exotic names — sarma, tumminu, munnìu, coppu, quartiglio, cantaru, carrozzu, cuoppo, cafiso — whose value varied from village to village, from city to city. Everyone had their own. These units of measurement were formally abolished with the birth of the unified Italian state, when Savoy standards were imposed and, formally, replaced the old measurement units of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. But traditions do not follow laws or edicts.

The cafiso, together with other units of measurement that have not been replaced in common usage, has travelled through the history of the island held up by the mythological Colapesce, accompanying the daily life of Aragonese, Normans, and Bourbons, all the way to the present day, measuring the green gold of a generous land: a nectar that over the centuries has never lost its unique charm as a true gift from Mother Nature, to be handled with the care reserved for precious things.

Our eternal cafiso, then, has all the credentials to be an ambassador of Sicilian identity, an icon of a way of being that is Mediterranean, Spanish, Middle Eastern, and African all at once, and that changes in size depending on whether you are in Mazara del Vallo, Modica, Selinunte, or Agrigento. It is the juxtaposition of multiple identities and influences — Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Greek, Maghrebi — one beside the other. Our Trinacria is therefore not an island with a single defining character, but many islands contained within one. Many ways of being, of living, of belonging to the Mediterranean.