The Raffadali area has archaeological and prehistoric sites of great interest, evidenced by the presence of some communities dated to the beginning of the Neolithic Age (4000 B.C.).
Some scholars believe that the ancient “Erbesso,” a mythical granary, of the Romans also stood in this territory.
As for the medieval age, the Arabs arrived in the area around the first quarter of the 9th century: they introduced the cultivation of citrus fruits, rosaceae (pear, apricot, pistachio) and perhaps carob and organized and carried out the channelization of the scarce water supply. The place name Raffadali has been assumed to originate from Arabic (Rahl-Afdal), meaning “excellent village.
In the late 11th century with the castle of Monte Guastanella, the fief was granted to the Montaperto family. In 1177 a community named “Cattà” appears for the first time in the records of the diocese of Agrigento, and in the 14th century the village had a parish dedicated to St. Leonard, which has now disappeared.The name of “Raafala” also appears in the diocese’s records of ecclesiastical revenues. Passed in the 13th century with the Angevins to the Nigrell family and then to Bonmartino of Agrigento, it returned from the latter by exchange in 1289 to the Montaperto family, who held it with alternating vicissitudes until the end of the 14th century; it also belonged in the 14th century to Scaloro degli Uberti by Montaperto inheritance.
Coming to today’s town it was founded on the ruins of the old farmhouse in 1481. In 1507 Pietro Montaperto obtained from King Ferdinand the “ius populandi” for the expansion of the urban agglomeration, and began work on consolidating the castle and building the mother church.
In 1649 Joseph Nicholas Montaperto, intervened to suppress an uprising by the people of Agrigento against Bishop Trajna, who was accused of forcing the population to starve. To reward the courage and loyalty of the Montaperto family, Philip IV of Spain awarded the feudal family of Raffadali the princely title. The last lord of Raffadali was Salvatore Montaperto Valguarnera.
In the early nineteenth century Raffadali was transformed from a feudal village to a rural hamlet of small and medium landowners, the emphyteutic right over the fractions of the estate remaining with the old feudal lords.
Raffadali’s history is intertwined with that of the Montaperto family, so is its coat of arms, which originates from the coat of arms of the noble family.
The territory of Raffadali, like that of the municipality of Aragona, has provided prehistoric evidence of extreme interest. A few kilometers from Raffadali near S.S. 118, known as the Corleonese-Agrigentina road, Busoné Mountain has many oven tombs and two large chamber tombs.
This mountain has always been linked to the one legend that has been passed down orally: every seven years, at midnight, the mountain opens up showing riches of all kinds and gold coins inside. In 1967, following the destruction of one half of the mountain, which was sold by the owners to Italcementi, a fruitful excavation campaign led by G. Bianchini brought to light inside pits dug near the cave burials, two small idols along with material pertaining to the facies of S. Cono Piano Notaro, datable to the Early Eneolithic. These idols, obtained from river bowls, were appropriately worked with incisions and ochre pigmentation at the inner anatomical lines. The two ‘Venuses of Busoné’ are supposed to represent the Great Mother Goddess of fertility and the earth, and demonstrate their worship in Sicily as far back as the late Metal Age. The Red Stone Mountain, too, has a necropolis, precisely from the early Eneolithic age (4000 B.C.), like the nearby Cozzo Tahari now almost completely devoured by bulldozers. A few years ago, inside the Palombara hill, three kilometers west of Raffadali, a small group of speleologists, entering through a narrow opening, found, at the end of a long tunnel, a widening with stalactites, and, welded to the ground, calcified bones and fictile shards of the Castellucciana Facies.
Until the 1950s, as Lo Mascolo testifies a few hundred meters from the town of Raffadali there still existed larger caves, now completely disappeared, real rooms dug into the rock: a very large one, in the Terranova knoll, another half-steeped to the north – west dug on the small rocky boulder, on which stood the chapel of Our Lady of Grace for which the district is named. Still more caves on the cozzo where the church of St. Anthony Abbot stands near which in the last century there were others.
Contrada Terravecchia, north of Raffadali at Km. 10 of S.S. 118, has many traces of an ancient settlement. From time immemorial, the soil has yielded not only miscellaneous rubble, millstones, oil lamps, coins, and jewelry.
In 1973 a ten-day excavation campaign was carried out from which emerged foundations of dwellings, fragments of columns, fictile slabs, etc…., all material from the late Roman period, currently preserved at the Raffadali Municipal Library. By some scholars such as Lapie, Calderone, Raccuglia and in the present day Lo Mascolo, it was desired to see in Terravecchia, in the light of the Itinerarium Antonini, the Statione Pitiniana, which was used by the Romans to supply themselves with provisions during warlike enterprises and which stood nine miles from Agrigento.
In addition, Grotticelle, which takes its name from the very numerous arcosolium and loculus tombs dug into the vertical wall, has a very large necropolis from the late Roman-Byzantine period (3rd – 4th centuries AD).
In the vicinity of the town we find the district of Buagimi, already attested as a hamlet in a document of 1271, which seems to be related to the Saracen stronghold of Bugamo described by Malaterra. Indeed, in his history he relates that in 1064 Robert Guiscard, since the siege of Palermo was going on for a long time, removed the camp and set out to roam the island. Thus it was that he ravaged the environs of Agrigento and conquered Bugamo about nine miles from Agrigento and deported all the inhabitants to Scribla in upper Calabria.
But the most relevant Arab evidence is that of the Guastanella fortress. Mountain fortress of rugged site and difficult access to the qila in the authentic sense of the Arabic word. J. Johns called it ‘a splendid example of Muslim settlement.’
It consists of a large village spanning a ridge east of the summit and on the summit itself, of an extraordinary stronghold, partly built of masonry, partly carved into the rock, a rock fortress of impressive size.
Mount Guastanella appears twice in the history of Arab-Norman Sicily, in both cases, it is recorded as a center of Muslim resistance against the Christians: the first time, during Count Roger’s conquest of the island, and precisely after Benavet’s defeat at Syracuse bel 1085, while the Normans were revolting against Chamut of Castrogiovanni, and Agrigento was the first to fall.
Once Roger had secured his surrender, he turned his attention to the Muslim strongholds in the mountainous area between Castrogiovanni and the coast; in a short time he conquered ten of these: Platanum, Missar, Guastanella, Sutera, Raselbifar, Mochuse, Naru, Calatanixset…., Licata, Remunisse.
Most of these localities have been identified: Platanum, Giudecca Mountain near Cattolica Eraclea; Missar, near S. Angelo Muxaro; Sutera, Sutera; Naru, Naro; etc….Guastanella, variant of Guastail and Guastil, is Mt.
After 1086, there is no news of Guastanella until the mid-13th c., when it appears for the second time in the sources: ‘it was within the boundaries of the diocese of Agrigento but, like most Sicilian strongholds, it was not enfeoffed and belonged to the royal domain.’ Then, during the great Muslim rebellion that profoundly changed the appearance of Sicily, Gustanella appears as the center of the Saracen rebels of the Agrigento valley.
In the chronology of the bishopric of Agrigento in the Libellus de Succession pontificum, compiled after the middle of the 13th century, we read that Urso bishop from 1191 was ‘taken by the Saracens and imprisoned in the castle of Guastanella and was ransomed for 5000, tarì’.
It is likely that the castle and settlement were both abandoned in about 1250, at the time of the final suppression of the Muslim rebellion.