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Siculo-Arabic or Sicilian Arabic (Arabic: اللَّهْجَة الْعَرَبِيَّة الصِّقِلِّيَّة, romanized: al-lahja l-ʿarabiyya ṣ-ṣiqilliyya) is the term used for varieties of Arabic that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included Malta) from the 9th century, persisting under the subsequent Norman rule until the 13th century. It was derived from Arabic following the Abbasid conquest of Sicily in the 9th century and gradually marginalized following the Norman conquest in the 11th century.

Siculo-Arabic is extinct and is designated as a historical language that is attested only in writings from the 9th–13th centuries in Sicily. However, present-day Maltese is considered to be its sole surviving descendant. Maltese evolved from one of the dialects of Siculo-Arabic over the past 800 years and a gradual process of Latinisation that gave Maltese a significant superstrate influence from Romance languages. By contrast, present-day Sicilian, which is an Italo-Dalmatian language, retains relatively little Siculo-Arabic vocabulary; its influence is limited to some 300 words.

History

Introduction to Sicily

During the 7th and 8th centuries, Sicily was raided from Tunis. The eventual Muslim Arab conquest of Byzantine Sicily was piecemeal and slow. The region was a frontier zone, even after the fall of Taormina in 962, which completed the invasion. Romance languages, such as African Romance, and Byzantine Greek continued to be used in the island well after the Arabic conquest. Its speakers were largely made up of Sicilian Muslims. However, based on the foundation charter on the Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (written in both Greek and Arabic), it can be speculated that Siculo-Arabic was also the mother tongue for many Sicilian, in this case Palermo’s, Orthodox Christians.

Norman kingdom of Sicily

When the Normans entered Sicily, the island was divided into two main non-Latin linguistic groups:

• Arabic speakers, mostly in Palermo, Agrigento, Butera, Enna and Noto
• Greek speakers, mostly in Messina, Taormina, Cefalù, Catania and Syracuse

In 1086, the Normans managed to secure the conversion of the last important Kalbid ruler of Enna Ibn Hamud. This conversion along with the Norman adoption of many Arab governing customs resulted in the emergence of a Christian Siculo-Arabic language. During the Norman era the chancery office operated in Arabic, Greek and Latin.

The Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq (Arabic: نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق, lit. "the book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands"), most often known as the Tabula Rogeriana (lit. The Book of Roger in Latin) is a description of the world and world map created by the Palermo-based Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154. Al-Idrisi worked on the commentaries and illustrations of the map for fifteen years at the court of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily, who commissioned the work around 1138.

Decline after 1200

In the post-conquest period, both Arabic and Greek were sometimes used by the new rulers and subsequently used in the king's fiscal administration, which managed royal lands and men in Sicily and Calabria. The many documents that it issued are among the main and most important sources for Arabic in Sicily. However, when the Hohenstaufen replaced the Normans, Arabic was dropped as a language of government in 1194 and the Hohenstaufen expelled the remaining Muslims to Lucera and North Africa in the 13th century. Due to the expulsions, the only remaining Siculo-Arabic speakers were Christians.

When the Aragonese took Sicily, they introduced Catalan nobility, made Latin the only official language; Greek and Arabic official records in Sicily ceased to exist by the 14th century.

Arabic influence continued in a number of Sicilian words. Most of these terms relate to agriculture and related activities.

Maltese language

The modern language derived from the Siculo-Arabic spoken in Malta is known as Maltese. While "Siculo-Arabic" refers to the language spoken before 1300, hardly any records exist from the 14th century, and the earliest record in the Maltese language is Il-Kantilena (Xidew il-Qada) by Pietru Caxaro (late 15th century), which is written in the Latin script.

Maltese evolved from Siculo-Arabic through a gradual process of Latinisation following the re-Christianisation of Malta (which was complete by 1250). Some items of Siculo-Arabic vocabulary are comparable with later items found in Maltese. Although Siculo-Arabic has had a relatively minor influence on modern-day Sicilian, this language shares many words of Arabic etymology, which may originate either in Spanish or Siculo-Arabic itself. Some examples are shown in the table a small sample:

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Maghrebi Arabic
• Pantesco dialect, a dialect of Sicilian spoken on the island of Pantelleria which has Maltese / Arabic influence.

References

1. "ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for Change to ISO 639-3 Language Code" (PDF). Retrieved 18 April 2024. Siculo Arabic is the term used for the variety (or varieties) of Arabic spoken in Sicily under the Arabs and then the Normans from the 9th to 10th centuries.
2. Martine Vanhove, « De quelques traits prehilaliens en maltais », in: Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb cccidental : dialectologie et histoire, Casa Velazquez - Universidad de Zaragoza (1998), pp.97-108
3. "ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for Change to ISO 639-3 Language Code" (PDF).
4. "639 Identifier Documentation: sqr".
5. "ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for New Language Code Element in ISO 639-3" (PDF).
6. "ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for New Language Code Element in ISO 639-3" (PDF).
7. So who are the 'real' Maltese. 14 September 2014. Archived from the original on 2016-03-12. The kind of Arabic used in the Maltese language is most likely derived from the language spoken by those that repopulated the island from Sicily in the early second millennium; it is known as Siculo-Arab. The Maltese are mostly descendants of these people.
8. Brincat, 2005. Maltese – an unusual formula. Originally Maltese was an Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian according to the needs of the developing community.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
9. Ruffino, Giovanni (2001). Sicilia. Editori Laterza, Bari. pp. 18–20.
10. Martin Haspelmath; Uri Tadmor (22 December 2009). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. p. 195. ISBN 978-3-11-021844-2.
11. Nicklies, Charles Edward (1992). The architecture of the church of SS. Pietro e Paolo d'Agro, Sicily. Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (Thesis). University of Illinois. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
12. The Age of Robert Guiscard, 2000, Page 171
13. Siculo Arabic, Dionisius Agius, 1996, pp. 79–88.
14. Houben, 2002, pp. 102–104.
15. Harley & Woodward, 1992, pp. 156–161.
16. Paolo Collura, Le Più antiche carte dell'Archivio capitolare di Agrigento (1092–1282), 1961, pp. 120–126
17. Metcalfe, Alex (2018). "Language and the Written Record: Loss, Survival and Revival in Early Norman Sicily". In Mandalà, Giuseppe; Martín, Inmaculada Pérez (eds.). Multilingual and Multigraphic Documents and Manuscripts of East and West. pp. 1–32. doi:10.31826/9781463240004-002. ISBN 9781463240004. S2CID 198864444.
18. S. Gleixner, Sprachrohr kaiserlichen Willens, 2006, pp. 412–413
19. "Kingdoms of Italy – Sicily".
20. Brincat, 2005. Maltese – an unusual formula. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Originally Maltese was an Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian according to the needs of the developing community.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Sources

• Agius, D. A. (1996). Siculo Arabic. London: Kegan Paul International. ISBN 0-7103-0497-8.
• Johns, Jeremy (2002). Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily. The Royal Diwan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81692-0.
• Metcalfe, Alex (2003). Muslims and Christian in Norman Sicily: Arabic-speakers and the end of Islam. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1685-8.

External links

• Agius, Dionisius A. "Who Spoke Siculo Arabic?", XII Incontro Italiano di Linguistica Camitio-semitica (Afroasiatica), ATTI a cura di Marco Moriggi, Rubbettino 2007. 25–33.

• Arabic languages
• Arabs in Italy
• Emirate of Sicily
• Extinct languages of Italy
• Maghrebi Arabic
• Languages of Sicily
• Languages attested from the 9th century
• Languages extinct in the 13th century
• 9th-century establishments in Europe
• 13th-century disestablishments in Europe