| Andalusi Arabic | |
|---|---|
| العربية الأندلسية | |
| Native to | Al-Andalus (modern-daySpain andPortugal) |
| Arabic alphabet (Maghrebi script) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xaa |
| Glottolog | anda1287 |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Andalusi Arabic orAndalusian Arabic (Arabic:اللهجة العربية الأندلسية,romanized: al-lahja al-ʿarabiyya al-ʾandalusiyya) was avariety or varieties of Arabic[a] spoken mainly from the 8th to the 15th century inAl-Andalus, the regions of theIberian Peninsula under theMuslim rule.
Arabic spread gradually over the centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia, primarily through conversion toIslam, although it was also learned and spoken by Christians and Jews. Arabic became thelanguage of administration and was the primary language ofliterature produced in al-Andalus; the Andalusi vernacular was distinct among medieval Arabic vernaculars in that it was used in poetry, inzajal and thekharjas ofmuwaššaḥāt.
Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation ofbilingualism withAndalusi Romance (known popularly asMozarabic) until the 13th century. Arabic in Iberia was also characterized bydiglossia: in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educatedidiolect and a register of the less-privileged masses.
After thefall of Granada in 1492, the Catholic rulers suppressed the use of Arabic, persecuting its speakers, passing policies against its use (such as thePragmática Sanción de 1567 [es], which led directly to theRebellion of the Alpujarras), andexpelling the Moriscos in the early 17th century, after which Arabic became anextinct language in Iberia. An Andalusi variety of Arabic continued to be spoken to some degree in North Africa after the expulsion, and it was notably preserved inAndalusi classical music traditions in North Africa. Andalusi speakers influenced the speech of thoseMaghrebi communities into which they fled and assimilated.
Spoken Andalusi Arabic had distinct features. It is unique among colloquial dialects in retaining from Standard Arabic theinternal passive voice through vocalization. Through contact withRomance, spoken Andalusi Arabic adopted the phonemes/p/ and/tʃ/. Like the other Iberian languages, Andalusi lackedvowel length but hadstress instead (e.g.Andalusí in place ofAndalusī). A feature shared withMaghrebi Arabic was that the first-personimperfect was marked with the prefixn- (نلعبnalʿab 'I play') like the plural in Standard Arabic, necessitating an analogical imperfect first-person plural, constructed with the suffix-ū (نلعبواnalʿabū 'we play'). A feature characteristic of it was the extensiveimala that transformed alif into an /e/ or /i/ (e.g.al-kirā ("rent") >al-kirē > Spanish "alquiler").
TheMuslim conquest of Spain in 711, about a century after the death ofMuhammad, involved a few thousand Arab tribesmen[4] and a much larger number of partially ArabicizedAmazigh, many of whom spoke little to noArabic.[3] According to Consuelo López-Morillas, "this population sowed the seeds of what was to grow into an indigenous Andalusi Arabic."[3]
Unlike theVisigothic conquest of Hispania, through whichLatin remained the dominant language, the Muslim conquest brought a language that was a "vehicle for a higher culture, a literate and literary civilization."[3]
Over the centuries, Arabic spread gradually in al-Andalus, primarily through conversion toIslam.[5] WhileAlvarus of Cordoba lamented in the 9th century that Christians were no longer using Latin,Richard Bulliet estimates that only 50% of the population of al-Andalus had converted to Islam by the death ofAbd al-Rahman III in 961, and 80% by 1100.[6] By about 1260, Muslim territories in Iberia were reduced to theEmirate of Granada, in which more than 90% of the population had converted to Islam and Arabic-Romance bilingualism seems to have disappeared.[6]
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The colloquial Arabic of al-Andalus was prominent among thevarieties of Arabic of its time in its use for literary purposes, especially inzajal poetry andproverbs andaphorisms.[3]
After theFall of Granada in 1492, CardinalFrancisco Jiménez de Cisneros oversaw the forced mass conversion of the population in theSpanish Inquisition and the burning of Andalusi manuscripts in Granada.[8][9] In 1502, the Muslims of Granada were forced to choose between conversion and exile; those who converted became known as theMoriscos. In 1526,Charles V (Charles I of Spain)—issued an edict against "heresy" (e.g. Muslim practices by "New Christians"), including the use of Arabic, extending the restriction to Muslims throughout the rest of Spain, theMudéjars. The Moriscos managed to get this suspended for forty years by the payment of a large sum (80,000 ducados).[10] KingPhilip II of Spain'sPragmática Sanción de 1567 [es] finally banned the use of Arabic throughout Spain—forbidding Moriscos from theuse of Arabic on all occasions, formal and informal, speaking and writing—leading directly to theRebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–71).[11] Still, Andalusi Arabic remained in use in certain areas of Spain (particularly the inner regions ofValencia andAragon)[12][13] until the finalexpulsion of the Moriscos at the beginning of the 17th century.[14]
Andalusi Arabic is still used inAndalusi classical music and has significantly influenced the dialects of such towns asSfax in Tunisia,Rabat,Salé,Fès,Tétouan andTangier in Morocco,Nedroma,Tlemcen,Blida,Jijel, andCherchell in Algeria, andAlexandria in Egypt.[15] Andalusi Arabic also influencedAndalusi Romance ("Mozarabic"),Spanish,Judaeo-Spanish varieties,Catalan,Portuguese,Classical Arabic andMoroccan,Tunisian,Egyptian,Hassani andAlgerian Arabics.
Under Muslim rule, Arabic became asuperstrate,prestige language and the dominant medium ofliterary and intellectual expression in the southern half of the peninsula from the 8th century to the 13th century.[3] Consuelo Lopez-Morillas notes that poetic genres such aszajal and the popular literature of proverbs and aphorisms demonstrate that, among speakers of Andalusi Arabic, there was a "consciousness of, and even pride in, the distinctiveness of the dialect, its suppleness and expressivity."[3]
Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation ofbilingualism withRomance until the 13th century,[4] when theAlmohad expansion into Iberia led to the flight of Christians living under Muslim rule in the south of Iberia northward to territories under Christian rule[16]: 173–174 and to the reduction of territory under Muslim rule to theEmirate of Granada following a sequence of Christian conquests of Muslim cities.[6]
Of the approximately 600 known secular Arabicmuwaššaḥāt, there about 50 withkharjas inAndalusi Romance or containing some Romance words or elements.[17]: 185
The influence of Romance on Andalusi Arabic was especially pronounced in situations of daily Arabic-Romancecontact. For example, an Arabic letter written by a Valencian Morisco in 1595 contained constructions such astaʿmál alburšíblī ('do what is possible,' constructed with the Arabic verbتعمل 'you do,' the Arabic definitive articleالـ 'the' and the Romanceburšíblī cognate of English 'possible') andaquštiš matáʿī ('at a cost to me,' with the Romanceaquštiš 'at a cost' and the Arabic personal possessiveمتاعي 'my').[5]
Theinfluence of Arabic on Spanish resulting from this linguistic contact has been thoroughly studied, but Romance also reciprocally influenced Andalusi Arabic.[5] Dialectical features of Andalusi Arabic owing to Arabic-Romance bilingualism and contact include of the adoption of the phonemes/p/ and/tʃ/; the substitution of the traditional Arabicvowel length for the Iberian syllabicstress (e.g.Andalusí in place ofAndalusī); and the change ofgender of some nouns to corresponding the gender in Romance, such as the feminine Arabic nounsʿayn (عين 'eye') andshams (شمس 'sun'), which became masculine in al-Andalus, matchingojo andsol.[5]
Arabic also coexisted withHebrew, and Arabic features and traditions had a major impact on Jewish poetry in Iberia.[5] There is evidence thatcode-switching was commonplace among bilingual populations in al-Andalus.[5] About half of the corpus of the more than 250 knownmuwaššaḥāt inHebrew havekharjas in Arabic, and some there are somekharjas with a mix of Arabic and Hebrew.[17]: 185
It also had some contact withBerber languages oral-lisān al-gharbī (اللسان الغربي 'the western tongue') in periods of Berber rule, particularly under the Almoravids[18] and Almohads,[19] thoughFederico Corriente identified only about 15 Berberisms that entered Andalusi Arabic speech.[3]
It was also characterized bydiglossia: in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educatedidiolect and a register of the less-privileged masses.[4]
Many features of Andalusi Arabic have been reconstructed byArabists using Hispano-Arabic texts (such as theazjāl ofibn Quzman,al-Shushtari and others) composed in Arabic with varying degrees of deviation from classical norms, augmented by further information from the manner in which the Arabic script was used to transliterate Romance words. The first complete linguistic description of Andalusi Arabic was given by the Spanish ArabistFederico Corriente, who drew on theAppendix Probi,zajal poetry, proverbs and aphorisms, the work of the 16th century lexicographerPedro de Alcalá, and Andalusi letters found in theCairo Geniza.[3]
As Arabisms moved into varieties of Iberian Romance over time, Andalusi Arabic borrowed widely from the Romance lexicon.[5] Corriente observes three periods in which Romance words entered Arabic, as Romance shifted from a substratum to an adstratum to a superstratum with respect to Arabic.[5] Semantic fields such as plant and animal names, domestic objects, and agriculture received the most loanwords.[5] Sometimes both the Romance and Arabic words were used, such as the wordsimlíq (fromUMBILICU) andsurra (سُرَّة) fornavel; Consuelo Lopez-Morillas recalls "the many households made up of Hispano-Roman women and Arab men."[5] Once subsumed into Arabic morphological patterns, Romance loanwords became difficult to distinguish as such. For example,nibšāriuh (fromaniversario 'anniversary' or 'birthday') was made plural asnibšāriyāt andlubb (fromlobo 'wolf') became abroken plural aslababah.[5] Romance loanwords were used in Andalusi Arabic through the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, even afterGranada had been monolingually arabophone for two centuries.[5]
The lexical impact ofBerber language on Andalusi Arabic appears to be considerably less than that of Romance and very small in proportion to the extensive Berber presence in al-Andalus.[5] Corriente identified about 15 Berberisms that entered Andalusi Arabic, only a few of which were still in use in the early 16th century.[5]
| Short | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | |
| Close | /i/ | /u/ | /iː/ | /uː/ |
| Open | /a/ | /aː/ | ||
| Diphthongs | /aw/,/aj/,/iw/[21] | |||
Thephoneme represented by the letter ق in texts is a point of contention. The letter, which in Classical Arabic represented either a voiceless pharyngealizedvelar stop or a voicelessuvular stop, most likely represented some kind of post-alveolar affricate orvelar plosive in Andalusi Arabic. Federico Corriente presents the case that ق most often represented/q/, sometimes/k/, and marginally/ɡ/ based on a plethora of surviving Andalusi writings and Romance transcriptions of Andalusi Arabic words.[25]
The vowel system was subject to a heavy amount of fronting and raising, a phenomenon known asimāla, causing/a(ː)/ to be raised, probably to[ɛ] or[e] and, particularly with short vowels,[ɪ] in certain circumstances, particularly when i-mutation was possible.
Contact with nativeRomance speakers led to the introduction of the phonemes/p/,/ɡ/ and, possibly, the affricate/tʃ/ fromloanwords.
Monophthongization led to the disappearance of certaindiphthongs such as/aw/ and/aj/ which were leveled to/oː/ and/eː/, respectively, though Colin hypothesizes that these diphthongs remained in the moremesolectal registers influenced by the Classical language. Alternatively in higher registers,[e] and[o] were only allophones of/i/ and/u/ respectively, while diphthongs were mostly resistant to monophthongization.[34] However,/a/ could turn into[e] or[i] viaimāla.[35] In the presence of velar or pharyngeal contour,/a/ was backed into[ɑ] and sometimes even rounded into[o] or[u], or even[ɒ]. This is evidenced by occasional Romance or even local Arabic transcription of/a/ as[o] or[u].[36]
There was a fair amount of compensatory lengthening involved where a loss of consonantal gemination lengthened the preceding vowel, whence the transformation ofعشّ/ʕuʃ(ʃ)/ ("nest") intoعوش/ʕuːʃ/.
New phonemes introduced into Andalusi Arabic, such as/p/ and/t͡ʃ/ were often written as geminatedبّ andجّ respectively. This would later be carried over intoAljamiado, in which/p/ and/t͡ʃ/ in Romance languages would be transcribed with the above letters, each containing ashadda.
Andalusi Arabic is uniquely conservative among colloquial Arabic dialects for retaining the internalpassive voice (صيغة المجهولsighatu l-majhūl) ofStandard Arabic verbs, using the same stem of the active voice verb with different vocalization. The passive voice is expressed in the past or perfect tense withkasra (/i/) on the last syllable anddamma (/u/) on all other syllables, and in the imperfect tense with damma /u/ on the personal subject prefix—the first syllable—andfatḥah /a/ on the following syllables.[37]: 89
| Active (مبنى للمعلوم) | Passive (مبنى للمجهول) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andalusi Arabic | transliteration | English | Andalusi Arabic | transliteration | English |
| تَرْجَم | tarjam | (he) translated | تُرْجِم | turjim | (it) was translated |
| يِتَرْجَم | yitarjam | (he) translates | يُتَرْجَم | yutarjam | (it) is translated |
Some nouns in Andalusi Arabic shiftedgender to match the gender of corresponding terms in Romance, such as the feminine Arabic nounsʿayn (عين 'eye') andshams (شمس 'sun'), which became masculine in al-Andalus, matchingojo andsol.[5]
Gender distinction in second-person pronouns and verbs was abandoned.[5]
There were about twenty suffixes from Romance that were attached to Arabic bases.[5]
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The-an which, in Classical Arabic, marked a noun as indefiniteaccusative case (seenunation), became an indeclinableconjunctive particle, as in ibn Quzmān's expressionrajul-an 'ashīq.
The unconjugated prepositive negative particlelis developed out of the classical verblays-a.
Thederivational morphology of the verbal system was substantially altered. One example is the initialn- on verbs in thefirst person singular, a feature shared by many Maghrebi varieties. Likewise the form V pattern oftafaʻʻal-a (تَفَعَّلَ) was altered byepenthesis[dubious –discuss] toatfa``al (أتْفَعَّل).
Andalusi Arabic developed a contingent/subjunctivemood (after aprotasis with the conditional particlelaw) consisting of the imperfect (prefix) form of a verb, preceded by eitherkān orkīn (depending on the register of the speech in question), of which the final-n was normally assimilated by preformativesy- andt-. An example drawn from Ibn Quzmān will illustrate this:
| Example | Transliteration | English translation |
|---|---|---|
لِس كِن تّراني لَو لا ما نانّ بعد | liski-ttarānī (underlying form:kīn tarānī) law[a] lā mā nānnu baʻad | You would not see me if I were not still moaning |
The oldest evidence of Andalusi Arabic utterances can be dated from the 10th and 11th century, in isolated quotes, both inprose andstanzaic Classical Andalusi poems (muwashshahat), and then, from the 11th century on, in stanzaic dialectal poems (zajal) and dialectal proverb collections.[14]
Substantial material on late Granadan Arabic survives in the work ofPedro de Alcalá—theVocabulista aravigo en letra castellana[38] andArte para ligeramente saber la lengua araviga,[39] both published in 1505 to explain the language of the conquered to the conquerors following theFall of Granada.[5]
Its last documents are a few business records and one letter written at the beginning of the 17th century inValencia.[14]
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