Christians in ninth-century Spain adopted Arabic at Latin’s expense

Evidence

The Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs; they study the Arab theologians and philosophers, not to refute them but to form a correct and elegant Arabic. Where is the layman who now reads the Latin commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, or who studies the Gospels, prophets or Apostles? Alas! all talented young Christians read and study with enthusiasm the Arab books; they gather immense libraries at great expense; they despise the Christian literature as unworthy of attention. They have forgotten their language. For every one who can write a letter in Latin to a friend, there are a thousand who can express themselves in Arabic with elegance, and write better poems in this language than the Arabs themselves. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 501

Categorization

• XREF: Paul Alvarus’s lament is a precursor of the trope of cultural/social death by acculturation seen in vault sources on Islam-West opposition — Aziz/Razack on Muslim identity anxiety.
• QUESTION: Could be worth chasing how this ‘they abandon their own culture for ours’ anxiety recurs through both Christian-about-Muslim and later Western-about-Muslim acculturation narratives.