Arabic office names surviving in Castilian masks profound institutional change

Evidence

In describing what he found in his valuable exploration of the archives, Meyerson uses terminology such as qadi (judge) and faqih (mayor). These, by their apparently pristine Arabic form, seem to convey that in the period he is describing the officials who bore such designations filled roles that were substantially identical to similarly named officials in Islamic countries. There is a trap here. That Valencia’s institutions were derived from those of the region’s Islamic past is not to be denied, but the linguistic changes that had taken qadi and brought about the creation of Castilian alcalde, for example, served to reflect profound institutional changes in the nature of that office. In speaking of this period, it is, therefore, perhaps less misleading to use the evolved Castilian (or Catalan) designations than the original Arabic ones in the way that Meyerson does. The chief justice of the local Islamic community who was known as the alcalde cannot be said to have in reality fulfilled the functions of the qadi as they might have been exercised within any truly Islamic polity. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 446

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general phenomenon of linguistic continuity masking institutional rupture — parallel to colonial-era titles retained under new rule.
• DEFINE: Clarifies that alcalde derives from qadi, and explains why using the evolved name over the Arabic original is analytically safer.
• SHARE: A specific person studying etymology or the persistence of Islamic institutions in Iberia would care about the qadi-to-alcalde derivation.