Since the departure of the Islamic armies to the African continent from the Gateway of Egypt in the year 20 AH and over the next seventy years until the year 90 AH / 709 CE, these armies did not calm down and did not hesitate to spread their culture in these northern countries of Africa.

And since Egypt was the front and first base for decades supplying the conquerors in Libya and even Tunisia with equipment and men, and planning military and land and sea operations, the establishment of Uqba bin Nafi of the city of Kairouan in Tunisia came in the middle of the first Hijri century as a base and forward capital for Muslims in North Africa, a stronger impetus for incursion. Deep in Algeria and the Far Maghreb, as well as in and around the western islands of the Mediterranean such as Sicily and Mallorca.

And when Musa bin Nusayr came to rule over North Africa, by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik bin Marwan and his brother Abdul Aziz bin Marwan, governor of Egypt in the year 85 AH, and he was able to unify North Africa up to the Atlantic Ocean under full Islamic sovereignty, and fate came with a gift to the Muslims when Tariq bin Ziyad realized Wali of Tangiers said that the opportunity is ripe to conquer Andalusia, due to internal disagreements and disturbances in the Visigothic kingdom, where Muslim armies set off to the north.

Since the year 92 AH / 711 CE, Muslims have tended to open this rich island, and five or six years have not passed until their forces reached southern France, and the Islamic civilized presence remained militarily, culturally and materially for eight centuries in Andalusia, but it is striking that despite the restoration wars, the defeat of Muslims and their expulsion, and the greatest committing The massacres of their rights in the Inquisition until the final expulsion in 1609 AD, the impact of Islam and its first language, the language of the Qur’an, are still present to this day and influential in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, the two heirs of Andalusia.

How did Arabia impose itself in Andalusia?

How did Arabic affect the Spanish and Portuguese languages?

What are the most prominent words remaining until today in the language of the Spanish and Portuguese ?!

That is what we will see in our next lines.

The famous British historian and orientalist Montgomery Watt (1909-2006AD) admits in his valuable book “The Merit of Islam over Western Civilization” that “most parts of Islamic Spain (Spain and Portugal today) witnessed a gradual crystallization of a homogeneous Arab-Islamic culture. Christians and Muslims were together in the Islamic Bekaa What appears to be conversant with the Arabic language, although they all use in their daily purposes a romantic dialect (ancient Roman) entered into Arabic words, and Christians under the Islamic rule adopted aspects of the culture of all rulers except with regard to religion, to the extent that they were known as the Mozarabs, and there is a paragraph written In the year 854 AD / 240 AH, the bishop of (city) Alvar complained that the youth of the Christian community were attracted by Arabic poetry to the extent that they neglected to study the Latin language and began to study Arabic.

Montgomery Watt confirms that the Jews in Andalusia also adopted the Arab culture in everything except in religion, and this helped the spread of this Arab-Spanish culture after the Christians began to restore Spain, two important matters.

The first is that some Christian princes persuaded a number of Arabists (Christians who spoke Arabic) to emigrate from the south and settle in uninhabited and disputed areas.

The second thing is that with the expansion of the area controlled by the Christians of the north from the Castilians and others, to the extent that it included with time Islamic cities, many of the people of those Muslim cities continued to reside in them under the rule of the Spaniards, and these cities remained mainly bearing the Islamic or Arab Spanish character [1].

It seems that the strong and historical reason in the borrowing of Spanish and Portuguese from Arabic for centuries is that the ancient dialects of these languages ​​were living in a state of fluctuation and instability at a time when the Arabic language had spread and settled in the Andalusian island, so those dialects were known as borrowed from Arabic in light of the strength and progress of Islamic civilization In all fields.

However, the most important reason is also that the Moriscos, who preserved their religion and faith among the corners of their chests and their sons and daughters despite oppression, torture, systematic murder and the Inquisition, were another reason for preserving the Arabic language until their last breath at the time, despite being forced to forget Arabic, and fight learning it secretly and openly. , They created the Alchmido language, meaning the foreign language, which is a language that brought together Castilian, Roman and Arabic, and was written in the Arabic letter, and it was fortunate that these vulnerable Moriscos were able to write some books in this new language, to preserve their religion and belief while not forgetting Arabic.

The scholar Muhammad Abdullah Anan affirms in his book Al-Mata'a “The State of Islam in Andalusia” that during his stay in Spain and in Madrid in particular, he had access to many Alkhamid books and documents, especially in the National Library of which it maintains a large denomination, including books of prayers and supplications and jurisprudence, most of which are opened. With the Basmalah and prayer on the Prophet, a manuscript of which has caught our attention in particular, which is a book on prayer and supplications, his closing phrase indicates that the Arabic language, despite its prohibition and pursuit of it, was still being studied and written in secret until the end of the sixteenth century, and here is the text of the aforementioned phrase:

Ali bin Muhammad bin Muhammad Shakkar from the land of Mizmadhiyati, the other day of Jumada al-Thani, on the twenty-four days of the month of Marus, from a day of a third of it in the year ninety-eight, nine hundred from the room of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him. And for a number of Christ from it in a year and eighty-nine thousand and five hundred Amen. Amen, O Lord of the worlds. It was completed with the grace of God and His good help, and it was the void and then the Asr prayer [2].

There is no doubt that these reasons were combined over long decades and centuries, and even after the military defeat of the Muslims in Andalusia, they were the reason for the survival of the impact of Arabism and Islam in Andalusia against the will of the Spaniards and others.

British historian John Brand Trend notes in his research in the book "The Heritage of Islam" that extraneous Arabic words in Spanish and Portuguese are most of the names of various kinds of things, emotions and desires, some of which were and still have Arabic names in current Spanish such as, tahona, hotel, mill (fonda), a definition or a definition (tarifa), and you may notice that the Arabic word is taken by the Spanish language and its related identifier, for example;

Need (la alhaja), rice or rice (el arroz).

The Spanish missionary Pedro de Alcala, who published in 1505 AD a few years after the fall of Granada, wrote two books dealing with the subject of the Arabic vernacular in Granada at the time, so the word “Adar” (a-dar) meant the well-known house in Arabic, and the word “Ajams” (a-xems) means the sun, and the word "sultan" (a-coltan) means the sultan and so on [3].

We also find the word "azotea" meaning the flat roof, which is the miniaturization of a surface, which is the flat roof, and the word "alcoba", which means the dome, which is the bedroom for the Spaniards and was used in some Arab environments with the same meaning, and the word "anaguel" meaning the nakel and its mobile Arabic, which is the pregnant, The word "almohada" and its Arabic for the pillow, which is the same meaning in Spanish, and "adoquin" the shop, which is the miniaturization of the shop, and its meaning in Spanish itself or in the sense of the stone seat, and "alcanzar" in Arabic means treasure, and in Spanish it means possessing something and gaining it [4].

The term “mezquito” almxido appears in several combinations, and the word “souk”, although it was officially known as mercado (elmercado), is known in the countryside as “el ozogne” [5].

You may be surprised if you learn that Spanish speakers still use the Arabic phrase “God willing” to this day, which is the only interpretation of the well-known Spanish expression “ojala” whose spelling “oxala” was then pronounced the letter “x” in it as the letter shin is pronounced ( sh).

If Arabic has found its way into Spanish, it has also penetrated into Portuguese, and there are hundreds of words of Arabic origin in Portuguese.

Like the word "alcatila", meaning marigold, which means velvet carpet in Portuguese, and "alfandega" in Arabic, "hotel," in Portuguese, meaning customs, and the hotel in its old Arabic meaning means the place where merchants receive in the forefront, ports and cities. It is also closely related to the ancient Arab culture and connotation, and "azinhaga" That is, the zanqa in Arabic, and in Portuguese, the narrow walkway, and the zanqa still means the same meaning, and the word "arratel" means a pound in Arabic and Portuguese [6].

And if the Arabic words have remained in the names of things, flags and terminology, then they have remained in the same way on many names of countries, places, rivers and valleys to this day in Spain and Portugal by name and connotation, such as "trafalgar" meaning "tip of the laurel", and "alcira" meaning the island, and in Portuguese. " alberca, meaning the blessing, and acequia, meaning the waterwheel [7].

These are some of the influences of the Arab-Islamic civilization in Andalusia in its two countries, Spain and Portugal, to this day. Arabic has been able to penetrate into these languages, and has proven that it is a language capable of linguistic and cultural coexistence, and on the inspiration of other languages, so it did not skimp on its counterparts with terms, names and words that they needed. Languages ​​that, while developing from local dialects in the Middle Ages, were the Arabic language and still enjoy the perfection and the strength of the structures and the infinite derivations!

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Sources

[1] Montgomery Watt: The Merit of Islam over Western Civilization, p. 43.

[2] Anan: The State of Islam in Andalusia 6/500.

[3] John Brand: Within the book The Heritage of Islam, pp. 41, 42.

[4] Ibid, p. 43.

[5] Ibid, p. 53.

[6] Ibid, pp. 45-47.

[7] Ibid, p. 52.