Aljamiado was a genuine new language, not merely Spanish transliterated into Arabic script.

Evidence

The Muslims of Romance-speaking Spain, on the basis of both their Koran translations and their struggle to make available some of the wealth of Islamic scholarship to those who could not read Arabic, created what was effectively a new written language. Of course at its simplest level the new “Islamic Spanish” literature consisted predominantly of words that, for all their Arabic-character spelling, were none the less wholly Spanish. Yet it would be profoundly misleading to think of aljam´ıa as a matter of mere external presentation or transliteration. In our days, we are still familiar with the model of a stenographer (there are a few such still surviving, once a quite common species) who is capable, using a system of writing totally different from normal orthography, of writing down a text that will not be in any way modified by the special system of notation in use. That is not what happens in aljamiado literature. In aljamiado texts, although it is true that the medium is the message (the use of the Arabic alphabet was in itself a powerful message), almost always it was also true that the message modifies the medium (to turn MacLuhan on his head). From a basis that was linguistically largely Spanish, a new Islamic written language was being created that rapidly distanced itself from standard “Christian” Spanish in Latin characters. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 656 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Aljamiado writing was a new language, not mere transliteration of Spanish — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 656

Broader Connections

• Aljamiado writing was a new language, not mere transliteration of Spanish #corroborates (1.00) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 656