Aljamia (aljamiado: Spanish written in Arabic script, and its literature)

Aljamia is the Spanish form of the Arabic al-'ajamiyya, "non-Arabic". The Muslims of al-Andalus used the word for the Romance dialects of their northern neighbours, dialects coloured with Arabisms, most of which were introduced from the 9th century by Mozarab emigrants settled in the Christian lands next to the caliphate of Cordova. The Romance language was also spoken in al-Andalus by all classes, especially the rural, alongside Andalusi Arabic. Only in the later Middle Ages did the Spanish term acquire the sense of Spanish written in Arabic script. ¹

The literature in this script includes a Spanish verse version of Qur'an 12 (Surat Yusuf) embellished with legends of the prophets, from an Aragonese Morisco, and the strophic poems of another Aragonese Morisco, Muhammad Rabadan of Rueda de Jalon, composed about 1603 on the episodes of the Prophet ﷺ's biography. An account of a pilgrimage to Arabia in rhymed verse was written in the early 17th century, and a polemic against Christianity of 1627 by Juan Perez, originally Ibrahim Taybili, a Morisco from Alcala de Henares who had emigrated to Tunisia. Apologetics were written in aljamiado, such as that of 1615 by Abd al-Karim b. Ali Perez, together with prose narratives about the Prophet, his Companions, biblical episodes and legendary figures such as Alexander Dhu l-Qarnayn. ²

Scattered manuscripts are held at Paris, Algiers, Aix-en-Provence, Uppsala, the British Museum and Cambridge, and a few at Toledo. The main collections are those of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the Biblioteca de la Junta para Ampliacion de Estudios, which preserves almost intact a hoard found at Almonacid in 1884, and the Gayangos collection at the Real Academia de la Historia. ²