History

According to legend, around the year 1000, at the height of Moorish rule in Sicily, in the Arab quarter of Palermo “Al Hàlisah” (meaning the pure or the chosen one), today called Kalsa, a beautiful maiden spent her days in a sweet yet solitary calm, devoting herself to lovingly tending the plants on her balcony.
One day, from high on her flowered balcony, she was noticed by a young man, a Moor. Overcome by a fierce passion for her, the young Moor did not hesitate for a moment to declare his love. The girl, moved by the promise of love she had received, welcomed and passionately returned the feelings of her bold suitor.
Yet the young man, who had had no qualms about abandoning himself to the sweetest outpourings of love, hid a heavy secret in his heart: a wife and children were in fact waiting for him in the East, the land to which he now had to return.
The maiden, devastated on learning such news and embittered by a betrayed love that was now about to abandon her, was seized by a deadly rage that drove her inexorably down the path of revenge.
She planned to seize the man's moment of greatest vulnerability to repay the merciless disloyalty she had suffered.
So in the night, while he had fallen into a deep sleep and rested unaware of his fate, she seized the right moment and struck him a mortal blow.
The Moor who had loved her and was about to leave would now never abandon her. She also decided that the face of that young man, still dear to her, should remain by her side forever, so without the slightest hesitation she cut off the young man's head, made from it an object resembling a vase, and placed a basil sprout inside.
The choice to plant basil was sealed by the fact that, as she well knew, this fragrant plant (from the Greek “Basileus – King”) has always carried an aura of sacredness, being in fact the herb of sovereigns; in this way, despite the terrible act she had committed, she pursued the mad, loving aim of continuing to care for her beloved.
Finally she placed the head on her balcony, devoting every day to caring for the basil growing in it.
Every day the girl's tears watered the royal plant, which grew ever more flourishing and lush.
The neighbors, filled with the scent of the basil and looking enviously at the plant thriving in that unusual Moor's-head vase, had terracotta vases made that reproduced the same features as the one lovingly kept by the maiden.
Today every Moor's head that is made bears a crown, an ever-present element meant to recall the royal plant that originally adorned the head of the young Moor at the center of this sad tale.