Arabic influence on the Spanish language overwhelmingly dates from the Muslim era of the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492. The influence results mainly from the large number of Arabic loanwords and derivations in Spanish, plus a few other less obvious effects.
History
The Spanish language, also called Castilian, is a Romance language that evolved from the dialects of Roman Vulgar Latin spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. The first examples of language with some features specific of modern Spanish are ascribed to documents from various monasteries in the area of Burgos and La Riojanewspaper El Mundo, 7-nov-2010: La RAE avala que Burgos acoge las primeras palabras escritas en castellano (in Spanish) in what is now northern Spain. However Toledo, in central Spain, which became the capital of the early Kingdom of Castile during its southward expansion, is where Spanish began to appear in a written form recognizable today. The preexisting Mozarabic dialect of this region (i.e. the Romance present during Muslim rule) is therefore likely to have also had an influence on modern Spanish.
The lexical influence of Arabic reached its greatest level during the Christian Reconquista, when the emerging Kingdom of Castile conquered large territories from Moorish rulers, particularly in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. These territories, which included the former Taifa of Toledo, had large numbers of Arabic speakers as well as many who spoke local Romance dialects (Mozarabic) heavily influenced by Arabic, both influencing Castilian. It is possible that Arabic words and their derivatives had also already been brought into Castilian by Mozarab Christians who emigrated northwards from Al Andalus in times of sectarian violence, particularly during the times of Almohad and Almoravid rule in the 12th and 13th centuries. As such, Arabic can be considered to have had a formative influence on the Spanish language.
The degree to which the Arabic language percolated through the Iberian Peninsula varied enormously from one period and area to another and is the subject of academic debate. However it is generally agreed that in much of the peninsula Arabic was used among the local elites, both Muslims and Christians, and that the prevalent vernacular in many areas was Mozarabic, a continuum of Arabic-influenced local Romance dialects. Only the southern third of the peninsula became totally Arabized as both Mozarabic and Christianity were extinguished following the Almoravid and Almohad periods.
Much of the Arabic influence upon Spanish came through the various Arabized Romance dialects spoken in areas under Moorish rule, known today by scholars as Mozarabic. This resulted in Spanish often having both Arabic- and Latin-derived words with the same meaning. For example, aceituna and oliva (olive), alacrán and escorpión (scorpion), jaqueca and migraña (migraine), alcancía and hucha (piggy bank), ajonjolí and sésamo (sesame) etc.
The influence of the Arabized Mozarabic and of Arabic itself is more noticeable in the Spanish dialects from regions with a longer history of Moorish domination than in those where it was shorter-lived. For this reason the dialects of the southern half of the country, known collectively as castellano meridional or Southern Castilian, seem collectively to show a higher degree of preference for Arabisms. Northern Spanish dialects tend to prefer Romance synonyms to terms of Arabic origin, such as the Romance calendario v. Arabic almanaque, hucha v. alcancía, espliego v. alhucema etc. Because Canarian and all Hispanic American dialects are mainly derived from Southern Castilian, Spanish words of Arabic origin are common in most varieties of Modern Spanish.
A number of words were more recently borrowed from Moroccan Arabic, principally as a result of Spain's protectorate over Spanish Morocco in the 19th and 20th centuries, although these are of minor significance.
The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands has also adopted a small number of words from Hassaniya Arabic, principally from Canarian sailors who fish in proximity to the Saharan coast as well as by those Canarians who returned from Western Sahara after the Green March of 1975.
Lexical influence The influence of Arabic on the Spanish language is fundamentally lexical but its other influences are also briefly examined in this article. It is estimated that there are about one thousand Arabic roots and approximately three thousand derived words, making a total of around four thousand words or 8% of the Spanish dictionary.: "El léxico español de procedencia árabe es muy abundante: se ha señalado que constituye, aproximadamente, un 8% del vocabulario total" See Influences on the Spanish language for more on how the number of Arabisms in Spanish has been estimated. The exact number of words of Arabic origin and their derivatives in Spanish is not known, and many words not included on this list are regionalisms: words that are used in certain parts of Spain and/or Hispanic America but are generally unknown elsewhere.
The high point of Arabic word use in Spanish was in late medieval times and has declined since then but hundreds are still used in normal conversation. The large majority of these words are nouns, with a number of verbs and adjectives derived direct from these nouns, e.g. alquilar (to rent) and alquilado (rented) from alquiler (rent), most of which are excluded from this list. There is also one preposition: hasta (until), and one adverb: he. There has been little influence on the basic grammatical structure of the language.La extraordinaria riqueza de nuestros arabismos
Many Arabic loanwords in Spanish start with a- or al-, where these sounds come from the Arabic article al- (giving just a- when the Arabic word begins with a solar letter). This initial a(l)- is an integral part of the word in Spanish; that is, it is not a morpheme.
+PrefixExamples in SpanishExamples in ArabicA-Aceite (oil) Aceituna (olive)
Azúcar (sugar)(az-zait) الزيت (az-zay-toon) الزيتون
(as-suk-kar) السكرAl-Almohada (pillow) Algodón (cotton)
Albahaca (Basil)(al-ma-khad-dah) المخده (al-qut-tun) القطن
(al-hab-baq) الحبق
List of words of Arabic origin This is an open list of Spanish words acquired directly from Classical and Andalusi Arabic, listed in alphabetical order. This list includes the Spanish meaning of the word as well as the Arabic etymology. No fixed standard of Arabic transliteration is used.
Rationale for inclusion
Due to the great influence of Arabic on Spanish vocabulary, this list is relatively restrictive: This list has been edited to include only words considered to appertain to the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture and society. Arabic words that may be understood by Spanish speakers but remain foreign to the Hispanic civilisation such as Ayatolá, Yihad and Chiita are excluded from this list. Only words that have passed direct from Arabic are included. Arabic words that entered the Spanish language through other, non-Iberian, Indo-European languages (such as Ayatolá, Beduino, Sofá and sorbete) are not included. Included as exceptions to this rule are álcali and álgebra, words of Arabic origin thought to have entered Spanish through "Low Latin"Corominas, Joan (1973). Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Gredos)—as suggested by their initial stress (the Arabic definite article al- is not normally borrowed as a stressed syllable). Generally, only Spanish root words are listed, derivations (including nouns, verbs or adjectives) not being included. For example, aceite (from az-zeit, oil) is included but not aceitería, aceitero, aceitón or aceitoso. On the other hand, aceituna (olive) is included since it derives not from az-zeit but from az-zeituna in Arabic, even though the root of the Arabic word is the same. Aceituno (olive tree), on the other hand, would not be included, since it shares the same root as aceituna. For this reason a significant number of verbs and adjectives are excluded from this list. An exception to this rule may be made when the derived word is much more commonly used than the root word, when the meaning of the derivative has no evident connection with the root word or when it is not clear that one is derived from the other (e.g. horro and ahorrar). Words derived from Mozarabic are not included (Mozarabic being fundamentally a Romance language) unless the Mozarabic word is itself derived from classical or Andalusi Arabic. Words acquired from Berber or Hebrew (or other Afro-Asiatic languages) are not included.
The etymology and meaning of most of these words can be verified on the site of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, although a small minority are available only in other sources or past editions of this dictionary.
Many of these words will be unfamiliar to many Spanish speakers because their use is restricted to certain regions of Spain or Spanish-speaking countries, or they are no longer in regular use. For example, the Arabic-derived word for ‘jewel’, alhaja, is very common in Mexico, whereas in Spain it is restricted to rural areas of the southern half of the country, the alternative Spanish term joya being much more common. On the other hand, the Arabic derived term for fruit juice, zumo, is the standard term in Spain, whereas in Hispanic America the Latin-derived jugo or agua are generally used. The Arabic term alberca in Spain refers to agricultural water deposits, whereas in Mexico it is the common term used for swimming pool, as opposed to piscina elsewhere or pileta in Argentina.
A (Ababol to Azumbre) ababol: poppy, in Aragon, Navarre, Albacete and Murcia. From Andalusian Arabic Happapáwr, a fusion from the Arabic plural al-ḥabūb (الْحُبُوب) (), the generic term for "seeds, beans or grains", and the Latin papāver. abacero: owner of an abacería, small food shop. From Andalusi Arabic *ṣaḥb uz-zād () "owner of supplies." () abadí: descendant/lineage of Mohammed ben Abad, founder of the Taifa Kingdom of Seville in the 11th century AD. From Andalusi Arabic 'abbādī (عبّادي) (). abalorio: cheap jewellery or jewellery beads. From Andalusi Arabic and Arabic al-ballūriy[u] (بَلْورَة) () "[made of/ like] glass or clear as crystal". Ultimately from Greek , "beryl" () abarraz: stavesacre (Delphinium staphisagria), a medicinal plant. From Andalusian Arabic ḥább arrás () "head seeds" (). abasí: pertaining to the Abbasid dynasty from Arabic عَبَّاسِيّ (), which overthrew the Umayyads in the 8th century. abelmosco: musk seeds, an aromatic plant. From Andalusi Arabic ḥabb al musk () literally "musk seeds." Classical Arabic ḥabbu 'l musk (). abencerraje: used in expression: "Zegríes y abencerrajes", "partisans of opposite interests". The Abencerrajes (in Arabic aban as-sarráǧ) was an Arabic family of the Kingdom of Granada, rivals of the Zegríes in the 15th century (). abenuz: ebony. From Arabic abanūs (أَبَنُوس) of the same meaning but in Arabic referring to the "black wood" of the tropical tree. () abismal: screw in head of a spear. From Arabic al-mismar (الْمِسْمَر) "nail." (). abitaque: a cut of wood used in construction of a certain shape and dimension. From Arabic aṭ-ṭabaqah (الطَّبَقَة) "layer" or "intermediate chamber" or "group, standard, type". (). acebibe: raisin. From Arabic az-zabīb (الزَّبِيب) of the same meaning but also "dried grape" or "currant" [= Ribes, genus of berry plants, e.g. blackcurrant, redcurrant and white currant]. (). acebuche: wild olive tree, or wood from such a tree. From Andalusi Arabic azzabbúǧ. aceche: copper, iron or zinc sulphate. From Andalusi (Hispanic) Arabic *azzáj, < az-zāj, < . From Classical Arabic az-zāj (الزَّاج), meaning vitriol - sulphuric acid or a sulphate زاج (). aceifa: Muslim summer military expedition. From Arabic aṣ-ṣayf (الصَّيْف), "summer" (). aceite: oil. From Arabic az-zayt (الزَّيْت) "oil" (). aceituna: olive. From Arabic az-zaytūn (الزَّيْتُون) () "olive" ().