Mozarabic
language
General
Overview
Area
of Distribution and Number of Speakers
Mozarabic (or Ajami)
was a Southern Ibero-Romance language, that developed in those parts of
Spain under Arab occupation from the early 8th century until about 1300.
It was the spoken language of the city-dwellers, who remained Christians
while the peasants generally converted to Islam. It appears that many Arabs
also came to use it, even though Arabic remained the only written language.
By AD 1000 there were some two millions
of Mozarabi speakers.
The
Name
The term Mozarabic was derived from the Arabic
word musta'rib
arabicized, and the
term Ajami -- from ajam
ugly,
barbarous.
See a historical note on
the Mozarabs,
the Christians under muslim domination in medieval Spain.
Origin
and History
Mozarabic was the Romance language spoken
by the Christians in the muslim possessions on the Iberian peninsula. For
much of the Muslim period (711-1492), Christians were treated tolerantly
and became culturally Arabized. Even after persecution by fanatic Muslim
newcomers in the 12th century, the Mozarabs were often in conflict with
Westernized "liberators" from the north. Their language died out soon after
the Arabs were driven out of Spain at the end of the 15th century, though
it is sometimes claimed that Mozarabic has left its mark on the dialects
of southern Spain and Portugal.
Mozarabic is still used as a liturgical
language in a few places in Spain and Morocco.
Phonology
and Writing
Because most of the evidence, apart from a
15th-century glossary from Granada, is written in Arabic script (which
uses no vowel signs), it is difficult to reconstruct the phonology of the
language, but it appears to be a very conservative Hispanic language, which
retained many archaic Latin forms and preserved a completely Romance sound
system.
The vocalism is marked by the diphthongation
of the short stressed e and o, even before [j]. The diphthongs {aj] and
[aw] were retained.
The initial F- and the groups CL-, FL-,
PL- remained unchanged. The intervocal -P-, -T-, -C- were also preserved
without change, cf.:
-
lopa she-wolf,
toto
all,
formica ant.
C before E and I was palatalized az [t
],
like in Italian.
Sources
Much of modern information about Mozarabic
comes from medical and botanical works that give Mozarabic terms alongside
the Arabic. To this was added the discovery of Mozarabic refrains (kharjahsor
markaz)
added to Arabic and Hebrew love ballads (muwashshahs) of the 11th
and 12th centuries; study of these began only in 1946. These refrains are
written in Arabic characters that lack most vowel markings and are often
rather difficult to decipher. The study of place-names in Southern Spain
is also a valuable source of information on Mozarabic.
Mozarabic
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Romance Languages Main Page
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page is part of Orbis Latinus
©
Zdravko Batzarov