The use of the Arabic letters yāʾ and jīm in Aljamiado in “The Archive of Toledo’s Mozarabs” (XII–XIII centuries)

Aljamiado manuscripts (medieval manuscripts in Spanish in the Arabic script) are of great interest to researchers in the Spanish language history as a source of data on the pronunciation of Spanish words in that historical period. In signatures to documents of “The Archive of Toledo’s Mozarabs of the XII–XIII centuries”, compiled in Arabic, we can find the signers’ names written in both Aljamiado and Latin. In the Archive, among Christian names, there are names beginning with the Latin sound [j], denoted by the letters i- or j- (e.g., Juan, Julián, Jacob). In Arabic script, these names are written with the initial yāʾ or jīm.

In this article, we have analyzed the alternation of the Arabic letters yāʾ and jīm in the Spanish names of the Archive to arrive to the following main conclusions:

1) The alternation of the initial letters i-/j- in the signatures to the Archive is explained by the fact that in the given historical period, these Latin letters were used for designation of two different sounds ([y] and [ǧ]), which is confirmed by the alternation of the initial letters yāʾ and jīm in the same names written in Arabic.

2) However, the other names in Arabic script, transcribed using the letter j in accordance with modern Spanish spelling, avoid the letter jīm and use the letter šīn instead. In the given historical period, the sound [š], denoted by the Arabic letter šīn, was rendered by the Latin x.

3) Treating their Catholic names as official, Toledo’s Christians used their Arabic names in Arabic signatures. These names’ transcription makes it possible to bring out the pronunciation of the initial i- / j- used at the time. The available variants of Latin signatures with their obsolete spelling fail to provide any idea as to the correct pronunciation of the names.