I mean... were there arabic schools to teach the population Arabic? Tutors? Were Arabs just marrying local women left and right?It took a few centuries, but eventually it did happen. How?
>>18615291How do you think Iberia became Latin-speaking before that?
It was never monolingual for a start, Romanic languages were the vehicular language until xi - xii centuries. And don't forget after Las Navas de tolosa battle (1212) the big part of Spain returned to Christianity.
>>18615291I think a more interesting question would be why did Al-Andalus come to have Arabic as the dominant language so quickly compared to North Africa, and why this didn't even happen at all for Persia where Persian stayed as the dominant language.But to attempt a response: I would imagine, with the addition of Arabic being a liturgical language for Islam, it isn't too different from how Latin spread to Iberia or how Turkish spread to Anatolia. But I honestly don't know why it proliferated so quickly. Quick disclaimer though: it wasn't perfectly "monolingual" like ever and it really varies from region-to-region and time-to-time. The northern parts were obviously very different. The Banu Qasi are my favorite example to look into to see how.While Arabs did marry local women and often preferred local women, they were mostly present in the urban centers so I don't believe this is the sole reason really. For Iberian males, they were given opportunities to climb the social ladder if they were to convert to Islam and marry into an Arab family or learn Arabic. In each time they came, the Berber settlers/pastoralists in the Iberian countryside eventually came to speak just Arabic after a few generations, and Berbers were pretty discriminated against by both Arabs and Iberian Muslims. I don't know why Berbers in Al-Andalus were so quick to lose their language in comparison to their brethren in North Africa. Maybe it's because Al-Andalus was far more urban and thus the Arab urban elite had more presence?The spread of Arabic crossed religious lines as well. People like Eulogius and Alvarus were complaining about how Christians were speaking Arabic and losing their original language in the 9th century. We start seeing the Gospels and the Psalms in Arabic, and later some reconquered cities were said to have Christians who only spoke Arabic. And from I've read, there's apparently cases of Christian refugees from Al-Andalus lands with names like Muhammad and Ahmad.
