This is part of an alternative historical ethnography of a village in the Alpujarras in contemporary times as if the reconquista had happened but was reconquered instead of the inquisition and expulsions happening. It details the lives of 'Latino' speaking villages of mixed Muslim and Catholic religion. In this althistory the Latino speakers are called Mudéjar or Mudaxxar people (to distinguish from monolingual Arabic speakers) and Christians as a religious community are called Castillians.


MUDÉJAR LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY AL-ANDALUS:
THE VILLAGE, RELIGION, LANGUAGE & ETHNICITY


Aldar village is dwarfed by the Albuxárat mountains surrounding it in the north. It is situated on the edge of a plain, on the lower skirts of Muley Hasán (known also as Mul-Hacén), the mountain that rises above it. Nearby is the tomb of the celebrated Nasri Emir of Gharnata [Granada] - Abu Hasán Ali [Muley Hacén or Aviacen] for whom the mountain is named. The tomb is an important place that functions like a pilgrimage site not only for the population of the Albuxárat region but also for the whole area of the former Emirate, visitors come from as far as the Northern Maghrib.

Due to inter-village marriages, many villagers have relatives throughout the region. The school called ‘La Merésa’ locally, which has a teachers house attached to it is marked by a Gharnati flag on top. Local children attend the school from the age of 5 to 10 and the medium of education is Arabic, although the teachers often switch to the local Latino dialect, especially when the children are very young and aren’t using Arabic among themselves or at home yet. There are calls from regional activist groups to introduce Latino as a medium of education, or at least for Latino speaking villages to have formalised education in the language. As yet, only those villages classified as Castillian are entitled to Latino education.

The school is close to the local mosque which was built in 1984 following a terrorist attack claimed by the ‘Reconquistadores’ (a Catholic Castillian separatist group). The mosque is an impressive yet simple white stone structure with a tall square minaret, typical of the region. The mosque is called Mesejid (local Arabic for mosque) by most people, although some elder people may also refer to it as Al-Mesquita (mosque) and one can also hear Alcasalá (the house of God). The azan (prayer call) is in Arabic, like everywhere else in Al-Andalus, but announcements of other kinds are usually made in Latino. The current mulé (Latino for imam), who is from a different village, announces deaths of villagers or village meetings to be held in the mosque.

There is a movement within the christian population of de-arabizing their language but their moves for more cultural autonomy are associated with separatism and in extreme cases with terrorism. Their origins are for the large part the same as the rest of the Muslim population but at some point there was a brief period of unrest in the Christian Kingdom of Castille (which is based on the northern Iberian coast around Oviedo) and many christians claimed asylum in the United Emirates of Granada where they were housed in villages with existing Christian populations.
The native Granadan (the name for all citizens of the Emirates of Granada) christians began adopting the name Castillian and their language became influenced by northern Castillian dialects (including elements of Asturian) and there was a move for literacy programs in the Latin script. Currently, in 21st century the language varieties of the "Castillians of Granada" are endangered and there are several linguistic revitalisation programs due to modern multiculturalist policies in the democratised Emirates. The movement for revitalisation does remain, in legal terms, limited to linguisitic domains. All villagers, and only Christian villages are entitled to Latino medium education, whereas all villagers speak varieties of Latino to various levels, first language speakers remain at about 60% of the rural population, and it is variously effected by language contact with local and standardised Arabic.

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The Mesquita or 'Alcasalá' of Aldar

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The Flag of the Nasri Emirate of Gharnata
 
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Latino? Surely the Romance-influenced language spoken in al-Andalus would be known as Andalusi?

Otherwise, great job!
 
Interesting.

From the fact that Catholics are know as "castillans", it seems that the POD is afyer the founding of the Kingdom of Castille, but that the Kingdom of Castille no longer exists (otherwise they wouldn't be 'separatists' but 'irridentists').

So this isn't a world without a reconquista, but one where the reconquista started, but then was pushed back. A re-reconquista??
 
Latino? Surely the Romance-influenced language spoken in al-Andalus would be known as Andalusi?

Otherwise, great job!
I think in this timeline Andalusi would be the arabic dialect. For example In OTL Morocco, dialects spoken in Rabat or Fez are considered andalusi arabic.
 
I think in this timeline Andalusi would be the arabic dialect. For example In OTL Morocco, dialects spoken in Rabat or Fez are considered andalusi arabic.

IOTL, wasn't the Romance language of Andalus known as "Andalusi Romance"? Latino just seems a little too vague and general to be a language name.
 
Wasn't it the name of the language spoken by sephardic jews?
That's Ladino.

I'd definitely think that Hispano-Arabic - or Andalusian Arabic, as it's called - would be the predominant dialect in a surviving al-Andalus. It spread pretty rapidly, to the point that the Spanish forbade it from even being spoken once they completed the Reconquista.
 
That's Ladino.

I'd definitely think that Hispano-Arabic - or Andalusian Arabic, as it's called - would be the predominant dialect in a surviving al-Andalus. It spread pretty rapidly, to the point that the Spanish forbade it from even being spoken once they completed the Reconquista.
Eh, that could mean that the language was not so spread actually, because if you could just ban it without dificulties.. It will probably become majority in more centuries, but it really wasn´t until the reconquista took Toledo and thus limited the Muslim states to the southern parts, by also havign a exchange of people with Chrstians and Jews fleeing north and Muslim south. By the time of the Emirate of Granada there were little Mozarabs, but that was a very small population compared to Castille.
 
That's Ladino.

I'd definitely think that Hispano-Arabic - or Andalusian Arabic, as it's called - would be the predominant dialect in a surviving al-Andalus. It spread pretty rapidly, to the point that the Spanish forbade it from even being spoken once they completed the Reconquista.

Really? Surely, it was mostly the elite that spoke Arabic?

I'd expect Mozarabic, or Ladino, or Andalusi, or whatever you'd call it, would begin to be spoken by the rich, and gradually become the language of the elite - something like how Urdu replaced Persian as the elite language of India in the Mughal era - so "Al-Andalus" would become "El Andalus". Then again, I don't know as much as you in regards to this, but I'm quite surprised at your point.
 

Deleted member 97083

If the POD is late enough that Granada became its own emirate, then the reversal of the Reconquista has been recent enough for there to be remaining Spaniards. Granada was the very last stage of the Reconquista.
 
Really? Surely, it was mostly the elite that spoke Arabic?

I'd expect Mozarabic, or Ladino, or Andalusi, or whatever you'd call it, would begin to be spoken by the rich, and gradually become the language of the elite - something like how Urdu replaced Persian as the elite language of India in the Mughal era - so "Al-Andalus" would become "El Andalus". Then again, I don't know as much as you in regards to this, but I'm quite surprised at your point.
Depends if we're talking about writing or spoken language. And I may have been unclear here.

Most of what we have that's written is in Arabic, since Arabic was the language of culture. The Mozarabic language continuum was the main spoken language for common people, but Arabic gradually got more widespread, and it was heavily promoted by the Andalusians as the vernacular language. That said, there wasn't really a standardized Mozarabic or Andalusian Romance language, and it didn't have a formal written script; Arabic was the written language. We have very few examples of Mozarabic languages in writing.

Ladino was a bit different, but related.
 
In Andalusian society, Andalusian Romance was considered low-register speech - befit for peasants or for lewd poetry. The best case scenario is that the Christian population isn't immediately extinguished and goes for a gradual decline - taking on Andalusian Romance as a source of pride in identity or whatever while everyone else speaks Andalusian Arabic and the TTL equivalent of MSA. Arabic is the language of the Koran, revealed to the prophet Mohammad - there's little chance of it being usurped by some peasant language. Plus Al-Andalus for most of its history was ruled either by a small minority of Syrian Arabs, native Iberian Muslims who fabricated Arabic genealogy to fit in, or Berbers who ended up intermarrying and assimilating.
 
In Andalusian society, Andalusian Romance was considered low-register speech - befit for peasants or for lewd poetry.

There are many, many examples of low-register speech that later became the language of the elite - Hindi-Urdu comes to mind, for instance. Of course, I see the elite speaking and standardizing a very Arabicized language, but it would still have Latin as its base.

Plus Al-Andalus for most of its history was ruled either by a small minority of Syrian Arabs, native Iberian Muslims who fabricated Arabic genealogy to fit in, or Berbers who ended up intermarrying and assimilating.

Sooner or later, depending on the size of the state, that flow of Arabs into al-Andalus will come to an end, and they will gradually become more culturally Hispanic. Of course, it doesn't have to go to the point of adopting a Romantic language, but it is very easy for that to occur.
 
There are many, many examples of low-register speech that later became the language of the elite - Hindi-Urdu comes to mind, for instance. Of course, I see the elite speaking and standardizing a very Arabicized language, but it would still have Latin as its base.

Different circumstances. Hindustani was always used to some degree by important Hindus and Muslims in India even if Persian held a higher rank in the totem pole. It certainly didn't have the derision that the Mozarabic dialects had amongst Andalusian Muslims.

Sooner or later, depending on the size of the state, that flow of Arabs into al-Andalus will come to an end, and they will gradually become more culturally Hispanic. Of course, it doesn't have to go to the point of adopting a Romantic language, but it is very easy for that to occur.

Except that didn't happen IOTL, even when the Syrian Arab minority lost out political control. Hispano-Romans and Goths quickly assimilated into the culture of their new rulers, adopting Arabic as a language and even falsifying genealogies to fit into the hierarchy. This was a grave concern amongst the clergymen in Islamic Spain who were disheartened by how quick the local youth took to Arab identity - much like how ethnic minorities lament their youth assimilating to some wider ethnic and cultural hegemony in other countries. The Berber Almoravid, Almohad and Marinid dynasties may not have been ethnic Arabs but they certainly didn't do anything to change what was and would've likely remained the prestige language: Arabic.
 

Deleted member 97083

In Andalusian society, Andalusian Romance was considered low-register speech - befit for peasants or for lewd poetry. The best case scenario is that the Christian population isn't immediately extinguished and goes for a gradual decline - taking on Andalusian Romance as a source of pride in identity or whatever while everyone else speaks Andalusian Arabic and the TTL equivalent of MSA. Arabic is the language of the Koran, revealed to the prophet Mohammad - there's little chance of it being usurped by some peasant language. Plus Al-Andalus for most of its history was ruled either by a small minority of Syrian Arabs, native Iberian Muslims who fabricated Arabic genealogy to fit in, or Berbers who ended up intermarrying and assimilating.
However if the POD is late enough for a Nasrid Emirate Granada to exist at all (1300s or so), then either:
  • If the Reconquista was not completed, but not reversed. Castille still exists, meaning there is a large foreign population of Christians to immigrate to Granada in the industrial era, allowing for the old languages to survive.
  • If the Reconquista was completely reversed, then Granada, a very tiny country in the southern corner of Iberia, had to conquer and assimilate the whole of Iberia--which would take hundreds of years, allowing the old languages to survive at least in mountainous areas, and the assimilation would not be a completed process.
 
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