15. International charactonyms ever used in world literature

International charactonyms.

Spanish proper names derived from Arabic

They came from the desert - men filled with religious zeal and riding under banners inscribed with the motto "There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His messenger". After establishing the Middle East and North Africa as the foundation of their new Arab/Islamic Empire, in the 8th century the Arabs landed on the Iberian Peninsula where they planted their religion and language. In the ensuing years, they were to greatly influence the history and way of life in that part of Europe. These Arabs and their Qur'an were not the usual conquerors. The cultures of the countries they occupied were not destroyed, as had been the fate of civilizations overwhelmed by other victorious armies, but preserved. Later these cultures were absorbed and enriched to form the Arab-Islamic civilization, which was to be mankind's pathfinder for many centuries. Subsequently, their learning was to be passed through the Iberian Peninsula to the remainder of Europe. However, it was to be in Spain where the Arabs stayed for some 800 years that they left their greatest impact.

Their language, Arabic, was one of the most important vehicles which carried this culture of the East to the Europe of the Dark Ages. In the deserts of Arabia, before the Islamic conquest, this Semitic tongue had developed over millennia into a descriptive flowing language of poetry, creating an enormous vocabulary. The Arabs were proud of their language and believed it had no equal among the tongues of mankind. As befitting a proud people, they spent much effort trying to keep their basic language pure. Even after the Islamic conquests when foreign influences began to stealthily move in, scholars tried to stem this tide.

After Islam moved out of its Arabian homeland, Arabic was the language which carried its message. Every converted Muslim wanted to learn the tongue of these desert men for it was believed that Arabic was the mother of all tongues first taught to Adam in Paradise. Anwar Chejne in his work The Arabic Language: Its Role in History, writes that an Arab author, Ibn Manzur (14th century) relates a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad who said:

"They [people] loved the Arabs for three reasons: I am an Arab; the Qur'an is Arabic; and the language of Paradise is Arabic."

By the time the Arabs were masters of Spain, Arabic was well on its way to becoming the scientific language of mankind. In the almost illiterate world of the newly occupied land, the rich Arabic tongue must have appeared as today English appears to a modern, educated sub-Saharan African who had been familiar only with a tribal dialect. Shortly after the Arabs conquered Spain in the early eighth century, Arabic became the principal language of both the centre and south of the Iberian Peninsula while in the Christian north, Latin with its dialects held sway. This was to continue until the thirteenth century when the Arabs began to be pushed out of their heartland in Andalusia.

In the Muslim regions of Spain, the use of Arabic quickly spread. By the tenth century, elementary education was commonplace throughout Arab Spain. With the exception of the very poor, all boys and girls attended school. Unlike the Christian parts of Spain and the countries of northern Europe, the vast majority of people in the Arab controlled areas were literate. Arabic, the language of this literate population, reached dazzling heights In less than a century, even the Christians living under Muslim rule became so proficient in Arabic that they neglected their own tongues.

Besides Spanish, Arabic contributed to the vocabularies of all the European idioms and saturated many of the languages in the Muslim countries, e.g. 57% Pushto, 42% in Urdu, and 30% of Persian are made up of Arabic words and terms.

However, of all the languages in the world outside the Muslim lands, it is Spanish, which includes the greatest number of Arabic borrowing. In this language's vocabulary Arabic words are to be found under every letter of the alphabet. In addition to thousands of others, an examination of a Spanish etymological dictionary will reveal that a vast number of words beginning with al are of Arabic origin. Many, although not common in the everyday tongue, are still used to some extent. Perhaps there is no better way to appreciate the great impact Arabic has had on Spanish than to visit the Spain of today.

Travelling across the country, one finds Arabic place-names everywhere: Albacete is derived from the Arabic (al-basit - the plain); Albufera (al-buhayrah - the small lake); Alcala (al-qalcah - the fort); Alcantara (al-qantarah - the bridge); Almeria (al-mirayah - the mirror); Alpujarras (al-bashurah - the bastion or the news); Benicasim (Bani Qasim - the sons of Qasim) ; Calatayud (qal cat Ayyub - the fort of Ayyub [Job]); CalataAazor (qal cat al-nasur - the fort of eagles); Guadalajara (wadi al-hhijarah - valley or river of stone); Guadalcazar (wadi al-qasr - valley or river of the castle); Guadalquivir (wadi al-kabir- great river); Guadalviar (wadi al-abyad - white river); Madrid (majri - a type of breeze); Medinaceli (madinat Sa lim - the city of S~lim); Murcia (misriyah -Egyptian); Tarifa (Tarif - name of the first Muslim to land in Spain); Vega (buq cah - field); and Valladolid (balad al-Walid - the town of Walid).

Besides these few samples of the hundreds of place-names derived from Arabic, the Spanish landscape is dotted with many others which are only partly derived from Arabic such as Guadalupe from the Arabic wadi and Latin lupis (valley of the wolf) or Zahara de los Membrillos (Arabic zahra' and Spanish de los membrillos - flower of the quinces). There are a lot of common Spanish names rooted in the country's Roman Catholic tradition, but both of which share Arabic etymologies originating in place names of religious significance, For example.Almudena (from the Virgin of Almudena, patroness of Madrid, Spain) and Fatima (derived from Our Lady of Fatima).

A number of given names of Arabic origin have been popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world for some time, such as Omar or Soraya (probably popularized after the late Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari). More recently, some other names have become popular, particularly in the Caribbean area, such as Zahira.

These and other Arabisms indicate how the translated meaning of Arabic words have become an integral part of the Spanish language. However, they form only a small portion of the Arab inheritance. The Arabic words themselves in Spanish are the true measure of the Arabic contribution. In all areas of human existence these words give us an idea of the immense impact the Arabs had on Spain and through Spain to the rest of Europe. The Arabic idioms in architecture, agriculture, art, astronomy, commerce, geography, industry (including armament, fabrics, glassmaking, leatherwork, papermaking, silk-making, etc.), literature, mathematics, mechanics, medicine, music and physics, clearly outline these contributions.

There is no question that the Arab impact on Spain made it the leading country in Europe for many centuries. When Europe was living in the age of ignorance, Spain was a cornerstone of knowledge. Many Muslim and Western writers have written in glowing terms attesting to this fact. Perhaps this cannot be summed up better than in the words of Gustave Lebon, an independent French thinker, who said:

"If Musa bn. Nusayr had been able to conquer Europe, he would have made it Muslim and would have saved it from the darkness of the Middle Ages which, thanks to the Arabs, Spain did not know."