ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the consequences of the discovery for a more accurate reconstruction of the history of the Italian language. Of the many features of the English gentleman that Joe Cremona acquired during his long stay in Great Britain, one was very typical: his apparent detachment from his work, giving the impression that, all in all, things were of little importance. It is unfortunate that it can no longer be Joe Cremona who will tell people what the Maghreb documents mean for the history of Italian, other than through what he has already published. However imperfect it was, the language of the documents could be nothing but Italian. As a Maltese scholar of firstly Italian then English training, Joe had a competence particularly suited to dealing with the problems of the texts: their language contains echoes of Romance, Germanic and Semitic varieties.
