ABSTRACT
The questions that arise from the study of Arabic in Sicily can broadly be divided into two. First, there are those issues which comment on the wider historical relationships between Sicilian Arabic and the island’s other languages. These have been, and are, the main concern for this volume as they provide ways of dividing up Sicilian society into language groups which did not always correspond to the island’s religious groups. Second, there are a number of issues which relate to the development of Arabic and its dialects more generally. However, those hoping that the Arabic of royal and private documents might easily further our knowledge of the development of Arabic vernacular forms are likely to face disappointment as there are no obvious examples of dialectal traces that have not already been found. Nor are there, for example, present tense markers such as /bi-/; nor, in spite of the occasional consonant with Mag˙ribı¯ pointing, any characteristically Mag˙ribı¯ verb forms in any Sicilian Arabic document, and only occasionally was the Arabic vocalized. As we shall see, many readings in Cusa’s I diplomi greci ed arabi are inaccurate and, as such, are open to misinterpretation.1 Besides this, there is the problem that ‘Sicilian’ Arabic, as found for example in the documents of the royal dı¯wa¯n, may not have been written by scribes who were native to the island. Clearly, this threatens to undermine regionally-based comparisons between different strains of what is often called ‘Middle Arabic’. For this reason, and the fact that this work is largely concerned with language and society as opposed to linguistics, it is not my intention here to comment in any detail on these aspects of Middle Arabic. Nonetheless, questions of typology or ‘what type of Arabic was used in Sicily’ belong to both fields and it is worth pausing to consider developments in the study of Sicilian Arabic before going on to lay foundations for future assessments when reliable editions of the documents in question might have become available, before finally examining the relationships between the Arabic and the transcription of it into Greek.
