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Siculo-Arabic ( ar, الْلهجَة الْعَرَبِيَة الْصَقلِيَة), also known as Sicilian Arabic, is the term used for varieties of
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
that were spoken in the Emirate of Sicily (which included
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
) from the 9th century, persisting under the subsequent Norman rule until the 13th century. It was derived from early Maghrebi 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, it being in foundation a Semitic language that evolved from one of the dialects of Siculo-Arabic over the past 800 years, though in a gradual process of Latinisation that gave Maltese a significant
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
superstrate influence. By contrast, present-day Sicilian, which is an Italo-Dalmatian Romance language, retains very little Siculo-Arabic, with its influence being 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 The siege of Taormina in 962 was a successful siege by the Fatimid governors of Sicily of the main Byzantine fortress on the island, Taormina. Siege The siege was led by the Kalbid cousins Ahmad ibn al-Hasan al-Kalbi and al-Hasan ibn Ammar, and l ...
in 962, which completed the invasion. Romance languages such as
African Romance African Romance or African Latin is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Roman province of Africa by the Roman Africans during the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and several centuries after the annexation of the region b ...
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 The Church of St. Mary of the Admiral ( it, Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio), also called Martorana, is the seat of the Parish of San Nicolò dei Greci ( sq, Klisha e Shën Kollit së Arbëreshëvet), overlooking the Piazza Bellini, next to the nor ...
(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 Agrigento (; scn, Girgenti or ; grc, Ἀκράγας, translit=Akrágas; la, Agrigentum or ; ar, كركنت, Kirkant, or ''Jirjant'') is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy and capital of the province of Agrigento. It was one of ...
,
Butera Butera ( Sicilian: ''Vutera'') is an Italian town and a ''comune'' in the province of Caltanissetta, in the southern part of the island of Sicily. It is bounded by the ''comuni'' of Gela, Licata, Mazzarino, Ravanusa and Riesi. It has a populati ...
,
Enna Enna ( or ; grc, Ἔννα; la, Henna, less frequently ), known from the Middle Ages until 1926 as Castrogiovanni ( scn, Castrugiuvanni ), is a city and located roughly at the center of Sicily, southern Italy, in the province of Enna, towerin ...
and
Noto Noto ( scn, Notu; la, Netum) is a city and in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily, Italy. It is southwest of the city of Syracuse at the foot of the Iblean Mountains. It lends its name to the surrounding area Val di Noto. In 2002 Noto and it ...
* Greek speakers mostly in
Messina Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 219,000 inhabitants in t ...
,
Taormina Taormina ( , , also , ; scn, Taurmina) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina, on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy. Taormina has been a tourist destination since the 19th century. Its beaches on ...
,
Cefalù Cefalù (), classically known as Cephaloedium (), is a city and comune in the Italian Metropolitan City of Palermo, located on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily about east of the provincial capital and west of Messina. The town, with its populat ...
,
Catania Catania (, , Sicilian and ) is the second largest municipality in Sicily, after Palermo. Despite its reputation as the second city of the island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, among the largest in Italy, as evidenced also by ...
and
Syracuse Syracuse may refer to: Places Italy *Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa'' *Province of Syracuse United States *Syracuse, New York **East Syracuse, New York **North Syracuse, New York * Syracuse, Indiana * Syracuse, Kansas * Syracuse, Mi ...
In 1086, the Normans managed to secure the conversion of the last important
Kalbid The Kalbids () were a Muslim Arab dynasty in the Emirate of Sicily, which ruled from 948 to 1053. They were formally appointed by the Fatimids, but gained, progressively, ''de facto'' autonomous rule. History In 827, in the midst of internal By ...
ruler of
Enna Enna ( or ; grc, Ἔννα; la, Henna, less frequently ), known from the Middle Ages until 1926 as Castrogiovanni ( scn, Castrugiuvanni ), is a city and located roughly at the center of Sicily, southern Italy, in the province of Enna, towerin ...
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'' ( ar, نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق, lit. "the book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands"), most often known as the ''
Tabula Rogeriana The ''Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq'' ( ar, نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق, lit. "The Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands"), commonly known in the West as the ''Tabula Rogeriana'' (lit. "''The Book of ...
'' (lit. ''The Book of Roger'' in Latin) is a description of the world and
world map A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of ...
created by the Palermo-based Arab geographer
Muhammad al-Idrisi Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti, or simply al-Idrisi ( ar, أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي القرطبي الحسني السبتي; la, Dreses; 1100 – 1165), was a Muslim geographer, cartograp ...
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.Houben, 2002, pp. 102-104.Harley & Woodward, 1992, pp. 156-161.


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 Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
and related activities.


Maltese language

The modern language derived from the Siculo-Arabic spoken in
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
is known as the
Maltese language Maltese ( mt, Malti, links=no, also ''L-Ilsien Malti'' or '), is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata spoken by the Maltese people. It is the national language of Malta and the only offic ...
. 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 has also absorbed many Siculo-Arabic words, with those shown in the table a small sample:


See also

* Varieties of Arabic * Maghrebi Arabic * Pantesco dialect, a dialect of Sicilian with unusually high levels of Arabic influence


References


Sources

* * *


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. {{Varieties of Arabic 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 Articles containing video clips