Latinity in Early Islamic North Africa

Abstract

This paper explores the social function of Latin in the early Islamic Maghrib and the concerns of the local communities who continued to use the language beyond the Arab capture of Carthage in 697/98. By focussing on those Latin sources whose origins can be assigned to North Africa between the end of the seventh and the mid-thirteenth century, it considers evidence for the use of Latin as a language of Christian commemoration, worship, and education; the survival of Latin and then Romance as a spoken language in the medieval Maghrib; the role of Latin as at least a short-lived language of religious disputation between the region’s new Muslim ruling class and their Christian and Jewish subjects; and the use of Latin as a language of trans-Mediterranean communications. The language probably enjoyed a more robust afterlife in Islamic North Africa than scholars have sometimes imagined, yet the way in which Latin was deployed in mediating relationships overseas may ultimately have undermined sustained interest in the region by medieval European Christians.