I wish to thank Dr Kamal Chaouachi for his interest in Malta’s history. However, I must point out that in his contribution of Sunday 16 June he misinterpreted me.

First of all I do not have a “thesis”. I simply examined al-Himyari’s text on Malta from the philological (textual criticism) point of view and applied the principles of linguistic stratigraphy and geographical linguistics. Al-Himyari provides us with the fullest known description of the destructive 870 raid on Malta and of the settlement of 1048, making it “a finer place than it was before”. My conclusions can be read in Chapter 2 (esp. pp. 33-46) of Maltese and other languages, Midsea Books, 2011. Although al-Himyari, reputedly following a lost fuller version of al-Bakri, says that Malta was left “hirba gayr ‘ahilah” (a mass of rubble without people), he also says that it was visited frequently by Moslems to cut trees, to fish and to collect honey, which presumes some form of continuous presence, like a garrison to ward off a Byzantine reconquest.

A principle of historical linguistics is that wherever a language substitutes another peacefully over a long period of time, the new language always absorbs a substrate from the previous language. In Maltese the very few words from Latin or Greek do not form a substrate, neither is there a Punic substrate. Two years ago I went through the 500 or so words defined by Aquilina as “etymology unknown” with Mohand Tilmatine, and we could not pinpoint a Berber substrate, either. As things stand, the closest dialect to the Arabic (principal) stratum of Maltese is Sicilian Arabic (see De Simone and Dionisius Agius), which was spoken in at least two thirds of Sicily up to Norman times, and in Pantelleria up to the 17th century and perhaps even longer. The Arabic substrate is very strong in Sicilian (G. Caracausi), and especially in the dialect of Pantelleria (G. Tropea). Another important cognate that must be researched is the Arabic spoken and written by Jews in Spain, Sicily and Malta (Dario Burgaretta is looking into this). My colleague, Prof. Martin Zammit, is delving into affinities with Andalusi Arabic (another peripheral dialect of Arabic).

Tunisian is not being ignored because a number of colleagues are closely watching developments in the linguistic atlas of Tunisia. The 12th century Muslim burials behind the Roman Domus point to close contacts with Sousse. Our main difficulty is, of course, finding written evidence of Maghribi as spoken in the 10th-12th century (apart from Ibn Makki’s criticism of the variety of Arabic spoken in Sicily in his time, up to 1107). Personally, I would also be very interested in comparative studies examining the Punic and the Berber substrates of North African Arabic.

Professor Joseph M. Brincat