ARABS, BERBERS AND NATIVES IN THE PROCESS OF LINGUISTIC ARABIZATION OF AL-ANDALUS (8th-10th CENTURY) I. THE ARABS AND THE BERBERS

Abstract

The Arab conquest of the Iberian Peninsula led to the meeting of three different linguistic communities. One of them, the Arabic-speaking elite, prevailed as the dominant community, whose signs of identity – the Arabic language and Islam – were adopted by most of the members of the two subordinate communities i.e. the Berbers and the natives. We propose to study the beginning of the process of linguistic Arabization of the Andalusian population from the perspective of sociolinguistics and the social history of language.