ABSTRACT
The tiny island-nation of Malta—actually, an archipelago of three inhabited islands: Malta, Gozo, and Comino—is located in the Mediterranean ocean, with Sicily to the north, Tunisia to the west, and Libya to the south. The Maltese language has continued to evolve under the influence of these European connections, and, as a result, has incorporated large numbers of words from Sicilian, Italian, and, more recently, English. The language of the poems has many features that suggest an origin either in Malta or Sicily; the Arabic dialect of the latter was very close to Maltese, though it died out in the 13th century. Jews were present in Malta already in Roman times, though surely only in small numbers. There were almost certainly Jews living there during the period of Arab rule, as there were also in Arab Sicily, and there are records of Jews living there under Norman rule since at least as early as the 1240s.
