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| Andalusi Romance | |
|---|---|
| Mozarabic | |
| Region | Al-Andalus |
| Ethnicity | Mozarabs |
| Extinct | by theLate Middle Ages |
| Arabic,Hebrew (both sporadically) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mxi |
mxi | |
| Glottolog | moza1249 |
 Extension of Mozarabic in the 11th and 13th centuries | |
| 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 Romance, also calledMozarabic,[a] refers to the varieties ofIbero-Romance that were spoken inAl-Andalus, the parts of the medievalIberian Peninsula under Islamic control. Romance, or vernacularLate Latin, was the common tongue for the great majority of the Iberian population at the time of theUmayyad conquest in the early eighth century, but over the following centuries, it was gradually superseded byAndalusi Arabic as the main spoken language in the Muslim-controlled south.[2] At the same time, as the northern Christian kingdomspushed south into Al-Andalus, their respective Romance varieties (especiallyCastilian) gained ground at the expense of Andalusi Romance[3] as well as Arabic. The final extinction of the former may be estimated to 1300 CE.[4]
The medieval Ibero-Romance varieties were broadly similar (with Castilian standing out as an outlier). Andalusi Romance was distinguished from the others not by its linguistic features primarily, but rather by virtue of being written in theArabic script.[1] What is known or hypothesized about the particular linguistic features of Andalusi Romance is based on relatively sparse evidence, of which thekharjas, or closing lines of an Andalusimuwaššaḥ poem, are the most important.
The traditional term for the Romance varieties used in al-Andalus is "Mozarabic", derived fromMozarab, (from theArabic:مُسْتَعْرَب,romanized: musta‘rab,lit. 'Arabized') a term used to refer to Arabized Christians in al-Andalus.[1] In the context of medieval Iberia, the term is first documented in Christian sources from the 11th century; it was not used by Muslims to describe Christians.[5]: 16
Some scholars dislike the term for its ambiguity. According to Consuelo Lopez-Morillas:
It has been objected that the term straddles ambiguously the realms of religion and language, and further implies, erroneously, that the dialect was spoken only by Christians. The very form of the word suggests (again a false perception) that it denotes a language somehow related to Arabic.[1]: 47
To describe the varieties of Romance in al-Andalus, Spanish scholars are increasingly usingromance andalusí (from the Arabic:أَنْدَلُسِيّ,romanized: andalusī,lit. 'of al-Andalus'), or Andalusi Romance in English.[1]
Speakers of Andalusi Romance, like speakers of Romance anywhere else on the peninsula, would have described their spoken language simply as "ladino", i.e.Latin.[1] The termLadino has since come to have the specialized sense ofJudeo-Spanish.[b][6] Arab writers used the termsal-Lathinī[7] oral-'ajamīya[c] (العَجَمِيَّة, fromʿajam, 'non-Arab') orAjami.[4]
Romance was the main language spoken by the population of Iberia when theUmayyads conquered Hispania in 711.[1]: 46 Under Muslim rule, Arabic became asuperstrate prestige language and would remain the dominant vehicle of literature, high culture, and intellectual expression in Iberia for five centuries (8th–13th).[1]: 36
Over the centuries,Arabic spread gradually inAl-Andalus, primarily through conversion toIslam.[1] 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.[9] 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.[9]
What is known or hypothesized of the particular linguistic features of Andalusi Romance is based on relatively sparse evidence, including Romance topographical and personal names, legal documents from the Mozarabs of Toledo, names in botanical texts, occasional isolated romance words in thezajal poetry ofIbn Quzman, andPedro de Alcalá'sVocabulista.[10]
Samuel Miklos Stern's rediscovery in the late 1940s of Romance present in some of thekharjas, the final verses inmuwashshah poetry otherwise written inArabic andHebrew, illuminated some morphological and syntactic features of Andalusi Romance, including sentence rhythms and phrasal patterns.[10]
Other than the obviousArabic influence, and remnants of a pre-Roman substratum, early Mozarabic may also have been affected byAfrican Romance, which would have been carried over to the Iberian Peninsula by the Berbers who made up most of the Islamic army that conquered it and remained prominent in the Andalusi administration and army for centuries to come. The possible interaction between these two Romance varieties has yet to be investigated.[11][page needed]
Mozarabic was spoken byMozarabs (Christians living asdhimmis),Muladis (natives converted to Islam), Jews, and possibly some of the ruling Arabs and Berbers. The cultural and literary language of the Mozarabs was at first Latin, but as time passed, it came to rather be Arabic, even among Christians.[citation needed]
Due to the continual emigration of Mozarabs to the Christian kingdoms of the north, Arabic toponyms are found even in places where Arab rule was ephemeral.[citation needed]
Mozarabic had a significant impact on the formation ofSpanish, especiallyAndalusian Spanish, and served as a vehicle for the transmission of numerousAndalusi Arabic terms into both.[citation needed]
Because Mozarabic was not a language of higher culture, such asLatin orArabic, it had no standard writing system.[citation needed] NumerousLatin documents written by early Mozarabs are, however, extant.[12]
The bulk of surviving material in Mozarabic is found in the choruses (orkharjas) of Andalusi lyrical compositions known asmuwashshahs, which were otherwise written in Arabic.[13] The script used to write the Mozarabickharjas was invariablyArabic orHebrew, less often the latter. This poses numerous problems for modern scholars attempting to interpret the underlying Mozarabic. Namely:[14]
The overall effect of this, combined with the rampant textual corruption, is that modern scholars can freely substitute consonants and insert vowels to make sense of thekharjas, leading to considerable leeway, and hence inaccuracy, in interpretation.[15]
It is widely agreed that Mozarabic had the following features:[16]
The following two features remain a matter of debate, largely due to the ambiguity of the Arabic script:[16][18][19]
Presented below is one of the fewkharjas whose interpretation is secure from beginning to end. It has been transcribed from a late thirteen-century copy in Hebrew script, but it is also attested (in rather poor condition) in an Arabic manuscript from the early twelfth century.[21]
| Transcription | Interpretation | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| ky fr'yw 'w ky s̆yr'd dmyby ḥbyby nwn tyṭwlgs̆ dmyby | ke farayo aw ke s̆erad de mibe, | What shall I do, or what shall become of me, |
Anotherkharja is presented below, transcribed from Arabic script by García Gómez:[22]
| Transcription | Interpretation | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| mw sīdī 'ibrāhīm y' nw'mn dlŷ f'nt myb d̠y njt in nwn s̆ nwn k'rs̆ yrym tyb grmy 'wb 'frt | Mew sīdī 'Ibrāhīm, yā nuēmne dolz̊e, fēn-te mīb dē nojte. In nōn, si nōn kērís̆, yirē-me tīb —gar-me 'a 'ob!— a fer-te. | My lord Ibrahim, |
However the abovekharja, like most others, presents numerous textual difficulties. Below is Jones's transcription of it, with vowels inserted and uncertain readings italicized.[23] Note the discrepancies.
| Transcription | Possible emendations |
|---|---|
| fən sīdi ibrāhīm yānwāmni dalji fānta mīb d̠ī nuxti in nūn s̆i-nūn kāris̆ f/bīrīmə tīb gar mī <a> ūb ləgar-ti | mū sīdi ibrāhīm - - - - f-īrīmə tīb gari mi ūb - |
Romance speakers from all over the peninsula, had they been asked, would have identified their spoken tongue as ladino, certainly not as leonés, navarro, or any other variety. All shades of Hispano-Romance share many linguistic features; only Castilian was anomalous, and in its eventual expansion southward it ruptured a fundamental unity of speech. East, west, and south of Castile, in both Islamic and Christian lands, the most characteristic traits of HispanoRomance recur. Were it not for the historical accident of Castilian expansion, Spanish would sound very different today, and its contrasts with Portuguese and Catalan would stand out in less sharp relief... Andalusi Romance, virtually untouched by outside linguistic influences in the first centuries of its history, may have been doomed from the moment in 1085 when Alfonso VI and his Castilian troops entered Toledo. The dialect of Castile had been forged in the northern mountains, where Basque speakers had never been subjugated and the veneer of Latinization was thin, and many of its features were anomalous within Hispano-Romance. Yet Castile proved as vigorous and expansionist in language as it was in politics and arms. Like an advancing wedge, the kingdom and its language pressed into Arab-held territory. The neighboring kingdoms were also marching southward: Galicia moved down the Atlantic coast, conquering what was to become Portugal, and the Catalan speakers of the northeast expanded along the Mediterranean and across to the Balearic Islands. But Castile encroached on the territory to its west and east, gaining particularly at the expense of León and Navarre, so that the "wedge" soon became a bulge. Within it Castilian, once an isolated minor dialect, came to be the tongue of the whole central peninsula.
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