Latin-Arabic Entanglement: a Short History

Erschienen in: Latin and Arabic : Entangled Histories / König, Daniel G. (Hrsg.). - Heidelberg : Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019. - (Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality ; 5). - S. 31-121 https://dx.doi.org/10.17885/heiup.448 Daniel G. König (University of Konstanz) 2. Latin-Arabic Entanglement: A Short History As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral regis- ters including derivate languages and dialects, Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual endeavours, and religion, Latin and Arabic are often regarded as cultural markers of Europe and the (Arabic-)Islamic sphere respec- tively. With regard to Latin, this conviction was already formulated by the humanist scholars Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457) and Juan Luis Vives (d. 1540).1 It also lay at the basis of the Finnish government’s proposal, during its EU-presidency in 2006, to reintroduce Latin as a pan-European medium of communication.2 In Islamic(ate) societies, in turn, the Qurʾānic message of Islam is intrinsically tied to the Arabic language.3 The latter is still used as a medium of communication in a region stretching from Morocco to Iraq. Adherents to the idea of pan-Arabism have highlighted repeatedly that Arabic has to be regarded as an essential cultural feature of this area. In the 1950s, in particular, they underscored the necessity of upholding a standardized form of Arabic in the various national Arab schooling systems and media, rather than adapting the latter to the colloquial realities of an Arab world marked by diverging dialects.4 It is questionable, how- ever, whether Latin and Arabic really constitute cultural identity markers of a clearly defined European and an (Arabic-)Islamic sphere. Latin boasts an important extra-European history in North Africa and has long ceased 1 Jozef Ijsewijn, “Latin as lingua franca: Renaissance Humanism and Translation,” in Translation. An International Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. Harald Kittel, vol. 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 1429–1430. 2 Government Communications Newsletter, “Finland’s EU Presidency: Conspec- tus rerum Latinus 19/2006,” December 27, 2006, accessed February 6, 2018, http://www.archive-fi-2013.com/fi/e/2013-08-29_2754308_40/Finland-8217- s-EU-Presidency-About-this-site/. 3 See Qurʾān 2:2; 13:37; 46:12, which mention Arabic as the linguistic medium of Qurʾānic revelation. 4 This debate is very well documented in the almost contemporary book by Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 13, 123, 158–159, 165–166. Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) 31 URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-2-gjbux9rjj5z99 DANIEL G. KÖNIG to be a defining feature of cultural activity in European societies.5 Arabic, in turn, was never used exclusively by Muslims.6 In Chapter 1 of this volume, Benoît Grévin offered a structural com- parison of Latin and Arabic as linguistic systems. The present contribu- tion, in turn, recounts the entangled history of Latin and Arabic from a macro-historical perspective. This entangled history can be divided into three phases. In Phase One, both linguistic systems came into contact in the ancient Roman Near East, in a time in which Arabic as a standardized supraregional language had not yet fully emerged. In Phase Two, the Ara- bic-Islamic expansion into the western Mediterranean, dominated linguis- tically by Latin and Romance, ushered in a period of intensive Latin-Arabic entanglement. Lasting approximately from the seventh to the fifteenth century, this period was particularly dynamic: the expansion of so-called “Latin-Christian societies” into Mediterranean regions hitherto under Mus- lim rule considerably transformed the geopolitical equilibrium of linguistic interaction. In Phase Three, i.e. from the late medieval and early modern periods onwards, the interaction of Latin and Arabic progressively receded into the sphere of academic endeavours. This was mainly due to the rise and fully fledged development of Romance languages. The latter succes- sively replaced Latin in its various fields of interaction with different forms of Arabic.7 Today, at the (preliminary?) “end” of this long history of entanglement, Latin and Arabic mainly seem to meet within an academic frame- work, both in Europe and the Arab world. Tracing this macro-history of Latin-Arabic entanglement is interesting for several reasons. On the one hand, its reconstruction proves that the interaction of so-called “Latin-Christian” and “Arabic-Islamic” societies pro- duced a large number of diverse Latin-Arabic milieus in which Latin and Ara- bic merged to some degree. Although research on many of these milieus boasts a long tradition, this historical-linguistic evidence has rarely been used to counter the dichotomizing master narrative juxtaposing and often opposing “Islam” and “the West.” Such a macro-history of what we could define as “Latin-Arabic transculturation”8 traces how different Latin-Arabic 5 Jürgen Leonhardt, Latein. Geschichte einer Weltsprache (Munich: C. H. Beck 2009). 6 See e.g. Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013); Georg Graf, Geschichte der christlich-arabischen Literatur, 4 vols. (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1944–1953). 7 See the comprehensive overviews in Reinhold Kontzi, “Das Zusammentreffen der arabischen Welt mit der romanischen und seine sprachlichen Folgen,” in Substrate und Superstrate in den romanischen Sprachen, ed. Reinhold Kontzi (Darmstadt: WBG, 1982), 387–450; Reinhold Kontzi, “Arabisch und Romanisch,” in Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, vol. VII: Kontakt, Migration und Kunst- sprachen. Kontrastivität, Klassifikation und Typologie, ed. Günter Holtus et al. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998), 328–347; Gustav Ineichen, Arabisch-orientalische Sprachkontakte in der Romania: ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997). 8 The conceptual term transculturación was coined by Fernando Ortiz in his study on processes of cultural reconfiguration in early modern Cuba. Ortiz used the term to highlight that processes of interaction between groups of different cultural origin not only result in processes of transmission, reception, adaptation, 32 2. LATIN-ARABIC ENTANGLEMENT: A SHORT HISTORY forms of entanglement came into being over the centuries, thus creating shared spaces between spheres framed by a different religious system and reference language, that are generally considered culturally apart. Since the chronological scope of this chapter covers the period from the Roman intrusion into the ancient Middle East up to the twentieth century, it is pos- sible to provide an overview on very different forms of entanglement and to acquire a typological understanding of the subject. Forms of Latin-Ara- bic entanglement range from descriptive and analytical comments on the other language to linguistic policy statements, and from different forms of transformation and appropriation—e.g. oral and written translations, bilingual word-lists, glossaries, loans, and calques—to graphic, literary, or systemic forms of linguistic hybridity. The identification and specification of different forms of entanglement gives rise to the question—not systemat- ically answered here—why particular forms of entanglement appeared in a specific historical setting, and not in another. Studying processes of Lat- in-Arabic transculturation thus gives us the possibility of explaining the link between specific entangled forms and their respective milieu of origin, and consequently allows for defining factors that encouraged such processes. On the other hand, the history of Latin-Arabic entanglement can also be read as a history of cultural segregation. Many forms and milieus of Latin-Arabic entanglement that resulted from the above-mentioned processes of transculturation succumbed to destructive pressures or retreated into the recesses of academia. We can often explain the disintegration or academic isolation of Latin-Arabic milieus as an effect of different manifes- tations of religious and cultural othering, intolerance, and even violence. An analysis of the driving forces of Latin-Arabic segregation shows, how- ever, that concomitant processes are too manifold and too intertwined as to support dichotomizing master narratives which draw clear boundaries between Christians and Muslims or between “Islam” and “the West,” not least because the disintegration of many Latin-Arabic milieus resulted from the rise of the Romance vernaculars. Simultaneously tracing the macro-histories of Latin-Arabic transculturation and cultural segregation thus allows us to highlight the complexity of cultural processes in the Euromediterranean. This two-pronged approach deconstructs culturalistic narratives of Euromediterranean history formulated, for example, by proponents of Orientalist and Occidentalist ideolo- gies.9 At the same time it explains, rather than substantiates, why certain voices feel justified in assigning Latin to a “European,” Arabic to an “Islamic” cultural heritage, rather than regarding both as intrinsic elements of a shared Euromediterranean history. and assimilation, but also lead to the transformation and amalgamation of pre- viously distinct cultural elements within a new cultural synthesis. See Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Havana:

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