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Document Details : Title: Slavic in al-Andalus and Ifrīqīyah Subtitle: A Case of Linguistic Hybridization in the Late 1st Millennium Author(s): DANYLENKO, Andrii Journal: Journal Asiatique Volume: 313 Issue: 1 Date: 2025 Pages: 5-22 DOI: 10.2143/JA.313.1.3294661 Abstract : The paper offers a sociolinguistic reconstruction of the Slavic language as used by the Slavic (ṣaqlabī) slaves in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) and Ifrīqīyah (North Africa) in the 9th through the 11th century. Transshipped from the Balkans and East-Central Europe, the ṣaqlabī slaves went through cultural and linguistic assimilation as a result of distant (outside the primary habitat of the Slavs) and historically short-term contact with local Arabic culture and language. Despite heavy assimilation, the ṣaqlabī slaves might retain ethnolinguistic group (tribal) identity and created a kind of linguistic hybrid, called here Slavo-Arabic. While summarizing the findings of his predecessors, the author treats Slavo-Arabic as a secretive and relexified language in the making. Some typological parallels with Judeo-Arabic and other mixed languages in the Afro-Asian Arabic-speaking world are discussed with an eye to shedding a new light on the linguistic history of Slavs in the Muslim Mediterranean ecumene and beyond. |
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