Contrary to the dominant idea about Al Andalus, the Arabic Arabic was not the language in common use during the long period of Islamic hegemony in the Iberian Peninsula. Not, at least, until the 11th century. The reason is simple. When the first Arab contingents and Amazigh penetrated Gibraltar in 711, most of the indigenous population spoke Visigothic Latin. Visigothic Latinwhich was a mixture of Vulgar Latin and the Germanic language brought by the Teutonic tribes. The new conquerors carried two languages: Arabic and English. tamazight. But they did not have the same social or political status. Arabic was the language of the Koran and of the new elites, whereas Arabic was the language of the Tamazight was the North African Berber language spoken by most of the troops.

The new colonizers quickly dominated almost the entire peninsular territory and imposed a new administrative and military structure. Arabic became the official language, but it took a long time for it to permeate the native population. Meanwhile, the main vehicular language was Andalusi Romance, that is to say, the evolved Low Latin that was absorbing Arabic words and expressions.

There is already a general consensus among specialists in accepting that between the 8th and 11th centuries, the Andalusian Romance and the Tamazight Tamazight or Berber were the dominant oral languages, while Arabic was reserved for the administration and the political and academic elites of Al Andalus. In a slow but unstoppable process, the Andalusian Romance was replaced by the Andalusian Arabic, which was already in the majority well into the 11th century. Tamazight, the language of the North African Berbers, disappeared although it left many traces in the language.

This multilingualism under the hierarchical dominance of Arabic is known among specialists as polyglossia. And in the case of Al Andalus it was a more than obvious phenomenon. There was an unequal relationship of power that was very clearly manifested in the use of the three languages that coexisted in the long Andalusian period.

“We can say that in the 11th century there was already a monolingualism of Andalusian Arabic and the Romance language gradually disappeared,” says Ángeles Vicente, professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Zaragoza and one of the foremost experts on the subject. And what was the Andalusian Arabic? “The vernacular Arabic language that was developed in Al Andalus,” says the Aragonese Arabist. With the expansion of Islam from the 7th century onwards from Saudi Arabia, in each region where the Arab tribes arrived, a new language germinated as a result of hybridization with the native languages.

“In Egypt, for example, Arabic mixed with Coptic and gave rise to Egyptian Arabic,” explains Angeles Vicente. “In Al Andalus it was mixed with Low Latin and gave rise to Andalusi Arabic. Romance languages were not yet well developed in the 8th century”. Of all the regional variants of Medieval Arabic, Andalusi left the strongest traces. “It is the best-known medieval Arabic,” says the Zaragoza professor, a disciple of the prestigious Arabist Federico Corriente. Andalusian Arabic enjoyed enormous social prestige and became a literary language, which is why abundant written material has been preserved, mainly proverbs and poetry.

While Andalusi Arabic borrowed from Romance or Low Latin, Andalusi Romance was nourished by Arabic in a truly remarkable phenomenon of linguistic osmosis. “The Andalusian romance was different from the one developed in the northern peninsular due to the influence of Arabic. Castilian Romance continued to evolve until today, while Andalusian Romance disappeared,” he explains.

Andalusi Romance, first, and later Andalusi Arabic were the vehicular languages of the three religious communities that coexisted in Al Andalus (Muslims, Christians and Jews). This fact, already corroborated by most linguists, breaks the old idea that linked the Andalusian Romance with the Mozarabs. “At some point, Andalusi Romance was called Mozarabic, the language of the Christians of Al Andalus. But that is something that has already been overcome,” says Ángeles Vicente.

The researcher Pablo Sánchez published in 2020 Origin and grammar of Andalusian romance.. As he argues in the book, Andalusian Romance has its origin in “Latin spoken by the Visigoths”. The Romance language under Al Andalus remained “isolated”, while Castilian, Catalan, Galician and Aragonese evolved. In the first centuries after the Islamic conquest, Andalusian Romance was hegemonic in oral communication, “even among the elites of Al Andalus”.

The process of Arabization was slow and romance gradually retreated to rural areas and domestic life. “In fact, most of the vocabulary that has been preserved from the Andalusian Romance refers to the countryside,” says the researcher. In the author’s opinion, the phonetics of Andalusi Romance is similar to that of Vulgar Latin. “If we were to listen to an Andalusi speaking today, it would probably remind us more of a Romanian than a Frenchman,” he says.

Pablo Sánchez places the extinction of the Andalusian Romance in a period later than that established by other experts. “It disappeared in the 13th century, it was no longer spoken in the Kingdom of Granada,” he says. The Almoravids, and later the Almohads, gradually cornered Romance and “prohibited the linguistic, cultural and religious diversity” of Al Andalus. It was the only time, in the author’s opinion, when Andalusian society was monolingual.

About 60 poems and several botanical and medical glossaries are preserved from the Andalusian Romance . One of them is deposited in the Leiden Library in Germany. We also have news of the botanist’s glossary Abul Jair of Seville, who compiled numerous plants throughout Al Andalus with their Arabic and Romance names. Others are kept in libraries in Paris or the British Museum.

In 2023, Pablo Sanchez published a new manual updated with a brief dictionary. And in the same year an extraordinary find was made in the library of Cambridge University. Among the bundles, a new glossary in the Romance language on staple foods, colors and herbs, attributed to none other than the Cordovan philosopher Maimonides, appeared. The exceptional discovery was made by Professor José Martínez Delgado. Apparently, the manuscript was rescued in Cairo in the 19th century and includes glosses in Judeo-Romance dated to the second half of the 12th century.