What did the later Norman settlers of Malta, and their successors the Knights Hospitallier, think of the megalithic temples of Gozo?

I will try to add to what u\BruceWareAllen wrote ahead of me. My answer shall focus on the interpretation of Early Modern writers on Maltese history, which I shall define as post-1530. (To my knowledge, these structures hardly featured in Maltese sources before the arrival of the Knights Hospitaller).

First of all, the question is delicate and a bit meta: you are asking about the interpretation at time t of historians on history at time (t - z). In a sense, to answer one would have to reason why those who wrote a secondary source did so at time t after reading a primary source.

This is a bit of a problem, because Maltese history is rather long. Interpretations varied over time, and while well studied in certain periods it suffers from a lack of good primary and secondary sources over some crucial periods.

In turn, this led to a number of unscientific theories which were spread by amateur researchers, politicians and misguided academia over the course of centuries. A clear understanding of these shortcomings will allow a better rounded answer to your question. In that sense one must explain the cultural context of the scholars who wrote the Early Modern narrative (post 16th century) the original question is discussing, which were picked up by later historians.

An important cultural factor in their writings, which is conspicuously downplayed, is the Arab interlude. As a result, not much is known of the late ninth to tenth century in Malta. Modern day historians, particularly G. Wettinger, speak of a clear ethnic break between the late-Roman/Byzantine period and the arrival of Arab settlers from North Africa.^(1) This is based on sources such as Al-Himyari^(2) and Ibn Hauqal.^(3) Others attempt to make the case for a continued and uninterrupted Christian presence on the island, particularly S. Fiorini.^(4) This duality in thought is mostly a contemporary phenomenon. For most of the Early Modern period, historians like G.F. Abela placed a very strong emphasis on the Christian and (implicitly) European elements in Maltese culture, and described Arab influences in the roughly 200/250 years between the end of the Byzantine period and the start of stronger Norman-Sicilian control on Malta as weak, and temporary in nature. These religious interpretation of the falsa religione behind these temples were quoted in the previous reply.

(As a meta aside, this long standing historic-cultural-religious disagreement leads to a rather heated debate involving Maltese academics, amateur historians, priests and foreign academics).^(5)

In any case, this duality - Malta being colonised by Arabic settlers who became Christian - forced Early Modern Maltese historians into a quandary: by the 16th century, the Maltese language which they spoke was the sole surviving dialect of Siculo-Arabic, and therefore a sign that the Arabic influences historians were discounting in Maltese history had a stronger impact than was being stated (at the very least). This was easily solvable in their view by denying the link with Arabic by instead insisting that Maltese language was some long lost Semitic survivor of Phoenician, or the local dialect of 'Carthaginian'. This latter explanation fitted in nicely with Early Modern texts explaining how inhabitants of Malta were able to understand Plautus.^(6) This thesis was perpetuated even by Maltese early modern historians who considered some Arabic influence - such as De Soldanis, who held that Maltese derived from Arabic, but "not purified Arabic but adulterated and mixed with the languages I have mentioned," that is, of Punic extraction.^(7) In that sense, the Punic Maltese population of the ninth century was seen to have somehow survived, ably converted to Christianity, into the Early Modern era and beyond.

Thus, by the late 1800s we have Caruana, A., musing that the area around the Mnajdra megalithic temples must have been "the Phoenician capital of Malta, perhaps Kabiria." Conflating the megalithic structures in areas like Corradino with "many unexplored Phoenician ruins," and a "Phoenician wall" at Villa Frere in Tal-Pietà. The frame of mind of these historians can be summed up by this passage from Caruana: "Moreover, the epoch of megalithic monuments, whether Keltic or Phoenician is pretty well known, [...] and an important bilingual inscription in Phoenician and Greek, found on one of our monuments, leaves no doubt about their Phoenician origin." ^(8)

Therefore, this narrative led 19th century historians to assess Maltese megalithic temples as Phoenician or Punic, rather than very early neolithic. To defend these views, the discovery of the Melitensis Prima had cemented Malta in the Phoenician canon. The finding of structures apparently older than Roman remains had, in their view, to be linked with Malta's famous Phoenician colonisers. In all fairness, some neolithic temple structures, such as Tarxien, have evidence of conversion with the addition of some Phoenician structures. However, in Evans out of a sample of 56 temple sites, only 11 show evidence of Punic additions. This point is disputed by Bonanno who has a very interesting study on the use of megalithic remains as Phoenician temples.^(9) Others even theorise the existence of a Greek colony in an intermediate period between the two.

For political reasons - namely the agenda of the British administration of Malta who sought to distance the islands from post-16th century Italic cultural influences - this supposed earlier Punic Maltese theory was much emphasised. The existence of original Punic remains, such as the Punic house in Żurrieq, and other later Romano-Punic remains, only served to perpetuate these theories, until the proper dating of these stuctures by Sir Temi Żammit.

Edit (1): To thank for the gold: Unexpected and amazing! - and to do some minor style edits.

Edit (2): To add reference to continued occupation of temples in Punic era (additions in bold).

References:

^(1) See: Wettinger, G., (2012), "Malta in the High Middle Ages," Melita Historica, journal of the Malta Historical Society. Vol. 15, no. 4. 2011, Joseph Grima (Ed): The Malta Historical Society, 2012. pp. 351.

^(2) See: Brincat, J.M. (1995), "Malta 870-1054: Al-Himyari’s Account and its Linguistic Implications," Valletta : Said International, 1995.

^(3) See: Luttrell, A., (1987), "Ibn Hauqal and tenth-century Malta," Hyphen, Volume 5, No. 4 (1987).

^(4) See: Fiorini, S., and Vella, H. C. R., (2015), "Truth Vindicated: Tristia ex Melitogaudo," Melita Classica, vol. 2, 2015, pp. 53 - 72.

^(5) See: Malta Today: 'Shed light on Arab period' leading academic pleads, Times of Malta: The Christian Presence in history, Times of Malta: Christianity Controversy.

^(6) Quintinus wrote in 1536: "although their language is such that it cannot be well expressed in Latin letters, and much less can it be pronounced by any other people except by the inhabitants, still the Maltese understand most of the Punic words which a Carthaginian character of the name of Hanno uses in the play of Plautus" – Jean Quintin d’Autun (ed. and trans. H. Vella), The Earliest Description of Malta (Malta, 1980), 19.

^(7) Agius De Soldanis, G., (1750), "Della Lingua Punica," Rome, 1750.

^(8) Caruana, A. A., (1882), "Report on the Phoenician and Roman Antiquities in the Group of the Islands of Malta," Malta, Govt. Printing Office, 1882.

^(9) Bonnano, A., (2010), "The Phoenicians and the Maltese prehistoric and cultural landscape," in Malone C., and Barrowclough, D., (2010), "Cult in Context: Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology," Oxbow Books, 2010.