Eighth-century Spanish chroniclers narrating Muslim rule were already partially Arabized

Evidence

These two eighth-century chroniclers recorded the events of their time without explaining how they fit into God’s scheme of history. Their old Visigothic world had crumbled around them, and their new Berber and Arab overlords were locked in constant internecine struggles: a major revolt of Spanish and African Berbers in 740, and recurring uprisings in various Spanish cities; rebellion and civil war seemed to flare up at every turn, with ever-shifting alliances between groups of Berbers, native Christians, and muwalladun (recent native converts to Islam). Can these writers be blamed for failing to see order in the chaos around them? The two chroniclers, writing in Latin for a Christian audience, limit themselves to narrating the more prominent of these intrigues. Drawing perhaps from their own experiences, but also from earlier Arabic chronicles, these two authors are already bilingual, bicultural—at least partially Arabized. Indeed the two chronicles show the process of cultural and linguistic Arabization that many Iberian Christians were probably undergoing; for this reason historians refer to the Christian communities of Muslim Spain as “Mozarab” (from the Arab musta’rib, “Arabized”). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 486

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology of “Mozarab” from musta’rib (‘Arabized’) anchored to the actual bilingual chronicle evidence.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the reader’s central purpose: this is the genealogical origin of a Christian community defined by Arabization living under Muslim rule, useful grounding context for Islam-West tropes.