Arabic acculturation so saturated Cordovan Christians that their own clergy lost Latin

Evidence

Christians were losing their distinctive Latin culture: none of the prominent court Christians, it seems, was capable of translating a letter to the Frankish king into Latin; an abbot from a nearby monastery had to be summoned. Christian authors of the following centuries translate Orosius and Isidore into Arabic for Christian readers who presumably cannot read Latin. Ostegesis did indeed write his accusations against Samson in Latin, but he apparently had a hard time of it, and Samson took pleasure in mocking him for his poor Latin. Loss of Latin, cultivation of Arabic letters, eager participation in court culture, circumcision: all this amounted, for writers like Samson, Alvarus, and Eulogius, to a prelude to apostasy. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 547

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the general dynamic of a conquered elite adopting the conqueror’s language over a couple of generations — comparable to post-Conquest English clergy losing Old English, or Gallo-Romans losing Latin.
• SEED: Article angle: language loss as the first quietly-enacted step of cultural conversion — the moment translators have to exist for the community’s own foundational texts.