Latin-speaking Muslims in medieval Africa

In the Middle Ages as today, Christians and Jews regularly called God "Allah" when speaking Arabic, just as Muslims did . It is perhaps not as well known that the converse was often also true: from a very early period, North African Muslims called God "Deus" when speaking Latin. This can clearly be seen on the 8th century Umayyad coins of Tunisia and Spain, which include statements such as:

• Non deus nisi Deus solus - There is no god but God alone (لا إله إلا الله)
• Deus magnus omnium creator - God is great, the creator of all things (الله أكبر خالق كل شيء)

I had always assumed it more or less stopped there, as Latin-speaking Muslims shifted to Arabic. But in the towns of southern Tunisia, the former Bilad ul-Jarid, Latin was still being spoken well into the 12th century. In his recent book La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval (p. 313), Mohamed Meouak uncovers a short recorded example of spoken African Latin from between these two periods, which otherwise seems to have escaped notice so far.

The 11th-century Ibadi history of Abu Zakariyya al-Warjlani, he gives a brief biography of the Rustamid governor Abu Ubayda Abd al-Hamid al-Jannawni (d. 826), who lived in the Nafusa Mountains of northwestern Libya. Before assuming his position, this future governor swore an oath:

Bi-llaahi (by God) in Arabic, and bar diyuu in town-language (بالحضرية), and abiikyush in Berber, I shall entrust the Muslims' affairs only to a person who says: "I am only a weak being, I am only a weak being."

In al-Shammakhi's later retelling, the languages are named as Arabic, Ajami, and Berber (بلغة العرب وبلغة العجم وبلغة البربر). As Mohamed Meouak correctly though hesitantly notes, diyuu must be Deo; he leaves bar uninterpreted, but it is equally clearly Latin per, making the expression an exact translation of Arabic bi-llaahi. The Berber form is probably somewhat miscopied, but seems to include the medieval Berber word for God, Yuc / Yakuc.

The earliest Romance text is the Old French part of the Oaths of Strasbourg, made in 842 and opening Pro Deo amur... "for the love of God". The Ibadi phrase recorded above curiously echoes this, although it predates it by several decades.

Re-besoin?

In English, "re-" is a moderately productive derivational prefix - reboot, remake, redo... In French, though, it seems more like an incorporated adverb - it's practically the main way you say "again": remanger (eat again), repleuvoir (rain again), redire (say again) are all perfectly normal. It's even possible to say ravoir (have again), although it seems to be less and less frequent.

Now a number of states are expressed in French with the verb avoir "to have" plus a bare noun: avoir faim "to be hungry", avoir peur "to be afraid", avoir besoin "to need" etc. Given the preceding remarks, you would naturally assume that "need again" should be ravoir besoin - and, indeed, it is possible to find this expression at least in 19th century texts, eg:

Rentré dans le journalisme, cet esprit capable, mais aride et paresseux va ravoir besoin de moi. (1856)

It appears to be very little used in the 20th century, though. Instead we hear avoir rebesoin: j'ai rebesoin de ça, I need this again. The only Italian I asked said this is quite impossible in Italian, but even there ho ribisogno gets a few dozen hits on Google (though for all I know they're all second language speakers.)

The fact that besoin appears bare, with no article, already makes it unusual among nouns. The ability to take the prefix re- makes it stand out even more: you certainly can't say *revoiture (car again) or *repain (*bread again). So maybe it's not a noun any more? It certainly looks like it's become kind of verby; but what can we label it? In an Australian context, the uninflected element of a complex verb would be called a preverb, but apart from suggesting the wrong order of elements, this term has way too many different meanings depending on which part of the world you're in. Perhas, as in Japanese, we could call besoin a verbal noun - although that, too, is all too potentially ambiguous. Any better terminological suggestions are welcome.

Translating the comedy of diglossia

Even in English, you can sometimes get a laugh by inappropriately mixing high and low registers - gangster slang in blank verse*, or discussions of medieval agriculture in Cockney. In a diglossic language such as Arabic, this trick is both easier and more effective. An excellent example is provided by Message to the Parliamentarians, a recent political satire by Algerian YouTuber Anes Tina. Apart from its primary themes - the offensive meaninglessness of Algerian elections and the hopelessness of abstention - this video is a spectacular send-up of the bombastic period dramas that occupy such a significant role in Arab TV schedules. In such shows, often set in the pre-Islamic period, the characters speak intimidatingly classical Arabic, case endings and all, as a matter of course. (This is, incidentally, somewhat anachronistic: no attempt is ever made to reproduce even the substantial inter-tribal dialectal variation that early Arabic grammarians explicitly tell us about, much less the substandard non-Bedouin varieties they preferred to ignore.) In this video, the characters speak accordingly - but with carefully planted intrusions from the world of everyday speech. Consider the opening scene:

lam yabqaa lanaa 'illaa Hallun waHid.
wamaa huwa lHall?
falnaktub irrisaalah.
wayHak! ma lladhii taf3aluh?
uktub: wilaayatu banuu qaynuqaa3, firraabi3i min shubaaTi l'awwal. risaalatun min ibnu taynah, annaaTiqu rrasmiyy walmukallifu l'i3laamiyy liqabiilati shsha3b, 'ilaa lfaasiq alfaajir almunaafiqi lla3iin addaa3ir alxabiithu ssaaqiTu lmaariq azzindiiq quzaaHah 'amiiru qabiilati lxarlamaaniyyiin. ammaa ba3d. la3natu l'aalihati 3alaykum. la3natu l3uzzaa wa hubal 3alaa Hamlatikumu l'intikhaabiyya. waHaqqi 'aalihati lwaay waay, waHaqqi 'aalihati shshiita, naHnu lan nuHallibakum fil'intikhaabaat. lan nashtarii sila3akum, walan natazawwaja minkum, walla3natu 3alaykum 'ilaa yawmi ddiin.
oNvwoyi.
hal bu3itha lmiisaaJ? hal hum 'on liin?
Sabran ya bna taynah, fa'inna la koneksyoona thaqiila.
tabban littiSaalaati quraysh. faltuxbirnii idhaa xarajati lvüü firrisaalah.

How on earth are we to translate this? The "letter" itself is not so hard - the inflated rhetoric is easy to render into olde English, and the occasional dialectal intrusions (bolded) correspond pretty well to English slang, producing a roughly similar effect. The allusions to pre-Islamic religion and early Islamic history are unlikely to make much sense to most English speakers, but corresponding names with appropriate resonances can be substituted without much damage; thus:

Only one solution remains before us.
What, then, is the solution?
Let us... write the letter.
Perdition! What are you doing?
Write! Province of Idumaea, on the 4th of Zivim. A letter from Taenaus, the official spokesman and media officer of the tribe of The People, to the evildoer [cymbals!], the sinner [!], the accursed hypocrite [!], the debauched [!], the malignant degraded renegade [!], the miscreant Cuzahah, prince of the tribe of the Charlamentarians. May the gods' curses be upon you. May the curses of Ashtoreth and Moloch be upon your electoral campaign. By the gods of canned applause, and the gods of brown-nosing, we shall not suck up to you in the elections. We shall not buy your goods, nor shall we marry from among you. And curses be upon you until the Day of Judgement.

But what can an English speaker possibly do to reproduce the comic effect of the dialogue that follows it?

Send.
Has the message been sent? Are they online?
Patience, O Taenaus, for the connection is slow.
Damnation unto Quraysh Telecom. Inform me when the message gets a view.

All the bolded words are from French except "slow"; but it would be a mistake to treat them as switches into French. Each of them is the normal, well-established way to refer to its referent in spoken Algerian Arabic. In daily conversations, the corresponding Standard Arabic synonyms (if known at all) would be used only by an insufferable pedant, or - more likely - as a joke. Conversely, in a school composition - almost the only context where the average Algerian child is expected to actually produce Standard Arabic - such terms would be strictly banned. No dialect of English that I know of has non-standard words for telecommunication technology (if it comes to that, I can't think of one offhand that has its own word for "slow" either.) The problem rears its head again soon after, as the protagonist attempts to buy a mobile phone in the marketplace. Suggestions are welcome, but it looks to me like this is one gag that simply can't be translated into English. Among their many other effects, it appears that sociolinguistic situations limit what kind of jokes you can make!

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* I think John Cowan will have the link for this one?