Reconstructing a Language from Fragmentary and Discontinuous Records: Andalusi Romance (So-Called ‘Mozarabic’)

The article deals with the Romance dialects spoken in the Iberian Peninsula under the Arabo-Islamic domain, so-called Andalusi Romance: a linguistic object with fuzzy borders from both the diatopic and the diachronic point of view. We have listed the available sources (documents, linguistic relics, place names) and highlighted the problems arising from their exploitation. Despite these difficulties, it is possible – as we have tried to demonstrate – to reconstruct at least the phonological outline of Andalusi Romance, thanks to the knowledge of the starting point (Latin) and of the parallel developments of other Ibero-Romance dialects.