1. The Texts

Both the Tultusceptru and the LSM align with a broader trend in Christian polemic on Islam: the composition of putative biographies of Muḥammad.²See generally Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It; Daniel, Islam and the West, pp. 67-130; Tolan, “Réactions chrétiennes aux conquêtes musulmanes”; Tolan, Saracens, pp. 3-169, especially pp. 137-147; Di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muḥammad; Di Cesare, “The Prophet in the Book”. Following Di Cesare,³Di Cesare, “The Prophet in the Book”, p. 11. works with “apologetic, polemical and proselytizing intents” typically depicted a “pseudo-historical” Muḥammad: authors, adopting a historiographical modality, constructed an (exaggerated) biography, which was then censured in order to discredit Islamic claims. This model - variously labelled “counterhistoryWolf, Kenneth Baxter, “Counterhistory in the Earliest Latin Lives of Muhammad”, in Christiane J. Gruber & Avinoam Shalem (eds.), The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 13-26.”,⁴Wolf, “Counterhistory”, pp. 13-14. or “anti-historiography”⁵See generally Tolan, “Anti-Hagiography”. - was established in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 7^th century,⁶See, e.g., John of Damascus (d. ca. 750), Liber de haeresibus 100. and characterises the earliest Iberian representations of Muḥammad. Transcriptions were key to this genre: for one, the inclusion of ‘real’ Arabic phraseology improves the history’s objective tone, by suggesting access to Muslim informants or Islamic texts; conversely, transcriptions highlight the foreignness of the other, in foregrounding the linguistic and cultural distance between the reader and the subject-matter. Both texts introduced here deploy polemical approaches drawn from this genre.

The first - the Tultusceptru - is found in the Códice de Roda from Navarre, on a single page between two longer texts. I rely here on my inspection of a digital copy of the manuscript.⁷= MS Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia 78, 185v. All references to the Tultusceptru follow the manuscript’s lineation. For full editions, see Díaz y Díaz, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, pp. 163-164; Gil Fernández, Scriptores Muzarabici Saeculi VIII-XI, vol. 2, pp. 1215-1216; Wolf, “The Earliest Latin Lives of Muḥammad”, pp. 99-100; González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, pp. 52-54; Yolles & Weiss, Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad, pp. 10-13. The text concerns Ozim,⁸Hoyland correctly identifies Arabic ʿaẓīm (‘great’) as the name’s underlying form: Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, p. 516. As corroboration, this epithet describes the Prophet’s character both at Qurʾān 68:4, and in the work of the Iberian biographer al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 1149): al-Šifā, vol. 1, pp. 462-463. Moreover, Latin <o> here reflects the expected vowel change before an emphatic consonant (here, /ðˤ/): see n. 121 infra. Wolf, followed by González Muñoz, suggests underlying Hāšim (referring to Muḥammad’s clan, the Banū Hāšim), based on a contemporaneous transcription Escim: Wolf, “The Earliest Latin Lives of Muḥammad”, p. 95; Wolf, “Falsifying the Prophet”, p. 116, n. 27; Wolf, “Counterhistory”, p. 18, n. 25; González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, p. 57. This is phonologically tenuous: the <e> of Escim corroborates the Arabic vowel raising expected before non-emphatic /Ci/, while <sc> only assists if the <z> of Ozim in ln. 8 is read as <c> (despite the character’s clear descending lunate stroke there). a Christian monk, who, while travelling to evangelise in Erribon,⁹Likely from Arabic Yaṯrib (via Greek Ἔθριβος), a pre-Islamic name for Medina at, e.g., Qurʾān 33:13: Vázquez de Parga, “Algunas notas sobre el Pseudo-Metodio y Españas”, p. 152. encounters an “angel of temptation” (angelus temptationis). Re-naming Ozim Mohomad, the angel teaches him a phrase for converting the satraps, which, unbeknownst to Ozim, invokes corruptive demons. Now, González Muñoz argues that the text should be treated as “un apólogo que pone en guardia sobre la naturaleza perversa del rito de conversión al islam”, rather than as biographical or polemical.¹⁰González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, p. 63. Conveying this moral message is certainly the text’s aim, as is made clear in its concluding sentence (ln. 24-25): unde omnes <qui> in errore conversi sunt et eos qui persuasione suaserunt manipula incendii nuncupantur (“For this reason, all who converted in error, and those whom they induced to do so by persuasion, are said to be bundles of hay for the fire”).¹¹Compare Qurʾān 72:15: wa-amma l-qāsiṭūna fa-kānū li-ǧahannama ḥaṭabā (“And as for the unjust, they are firewood for Hell”). See also George Monachus (fl. mid-9^th-century), Chronicon, vol. 2, p. 701, 21-23: [ἔφη] τοὺς δὲ Ἰουδαίους καὶ Χριστιανοὺς ξύλα τοῦ πυρὸς γενομένους ὑπολειφθῆναι (“He [Muḥammad] said that the Jews and the Christians were left to become timber for the fire”). However, the Tultusceptru’s argumentative form (putatively narrating the beginning of Muḥammad’s prophetic career), and the claims implicit in its narration (that Muḥammad’s claim to prophethood is invalid), situate the text within the broader genre of polemical biography. This is not to say that the text’s polemic is straightforward: rather, Wolf notes that the Tultusceptru implicitly confirms Islam’s monotheistic basis, ascribing divine (albeit corrupted) revelation and (underlying) Christian faith to Muḥammad.¹²Wolf, “The Earliest Latin Lives of Muḥammad”, pp. 95-96; Wolf, “Falsifying the Prophet”, pp. 109-110; Wolf, “Counterhistory”, pp. 18-19.

Determining the Tultusceptru’s provenance is difficult. The Códice de Roda was completed in the late 10^th century,¹³de Carlos Villamarín, “El Códice de Roda”, pp. 121-123. and the text’s scribal hand is dateable to 1030-1060.¹⁴Díaz y Díaz, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, pp. 160-161. The brief text shares a geographic and generic connection with the Istoria de Mahomet, the first Iberian pseudo-history of Islam, which was sourced in Navarre by Eulogius of Córdoba (d. 859) for his Liber apologeticus martyrum in 848-850.¹⁵Díaz y Díaz, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, pp. 165-168; Wasilewski, “The ‘Life of Muhammad’ in Eulogius of Córdoba”, pp. 333-353. On this basis, Wolf proposes a 9^th-century Navarran Vorlage for the Tultusceptru.¹⁶See Wolf, “Counterhistory”, p. 17; Wolf, “Falsifying the Prophet”, p. 108. However, this comparison is insecure: the Tultusceptru’s narrative - warning about the spiritual dangers of conversion to Islam, and making limited concessions to Islam’s monotheistic genealogy - would recommend an origin within a Christian minority; moreover, the text reflects polemical tropes of 9^th-century Christian writings from Córdoba,¹⁷González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, pp. 55-57. as well as those of the Greek-speaking East.¹⁸See, e.g., n. 9 supra; n. 121 infra. These factors support a provenance in the Muslim-majority south of the Iberian Peninsula, and a date between the late 9^th and late 10^th centuries.¹⁹See Gil Fernández, Scriptores Muzarabici Saeculi VIII-XI, vol. 1, pp. 124-125; González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, p. 63.

The second, more substantial text - the LSM - was composed within the 12^th-13^th-century Toledo translation movement, and provides a detailed narrative of the isrāʾ and mirʿāǧ (Muḥammad’s night journey to Jerusalem, and ascent to heaven). According to the work’s preface (105c.9-d.5),²⁰All references to the LSM follow the folio and column numbering in MS Paris BnF Lat. 6064. the Latin text is Bonaventure of Siena’s contemporaneous translation of a now-lost Castilian original, produced by Don Abraham, King Alfonso X’s Jewish physician, between 1260 and 1264. Abraham’s text relies directly on Arabic Islamic sources - including the Qurʾān, aḥādīṯ (prophetic traditions), and biographical works like the Kitāb al-mirʿaj of al-Qušayrī (d. 1072) - as well as Mozarabic and Jewish commentaries, while Bonaventure’s text incorporates Christian Latin commentaries.²¹Roelli, “Zu den Editionen des Liber scalae Machometi”, pp. 315-317; Echevarría, “Eschatology or Biography?”, pp. 136-149; Besson & Brossard-Dandré, Le livre de l’échelle de Mahomet, pp. 18-21, 39-59; Longoni, Il libro della scala di Maometto, pp. xviii-xxi. The preface indicates the author’s intention to make known “those rash undertakings by Muḥammad against Christ” (105c.42-44: Machometi … contra Christum temere attemptata) and so reaffirm Christian faith; this polemical aim was likely informed by Alfonso X’s desire to undermine - both textually and politically - Islamic claims of legitimacy, in order to justify his rule over incorporated Andalusian Muslims.²²Echevarría, “Eschatology or Biography?”, pp. 143-144. See generally Tolan, Saracens, pp. 186-189; Daniel, Islam and the West, p. 233. Notably, however, the text itself is largely bereft of sceptical commentary, with any polemic left largely unstated.²³But see the comment of Muḥammad’s kinsmen at 126a.4-14: ha! mendax, quomodo audes talia enarrare? … nos autem bene scimus quod abhinc usque ad Templum iam dictum est iter unius mensis ad minus. (“Ha! Liar, how do you dare to relate such things? … But we know well that, from here to the aforementioned Temple, it is a journey of at least one month!”). This may be ascribed to the text’s inherent absurdity to its intended Christian audience, or to its role as a source for other writers seeking to cite an putatively accurate statement of Islamic beliefs.²⁴See Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam in Old French, pp. 22-25; Echevarría, “Eschatology or Biography?”, pp.135-136.

Two 14^th-century manuscripts print Bonaventure’s Latin text: MS Vatican Lat. 4072Liber scale Machometi, in MS Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Latin 4072, 241v-289v, [online], available on: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.4072 [consulted 17/06/2022]., and MS Paris BnF Lat. 6064Liber scale Machometi, in MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Latin 6064, 105v-126v, [online], available on: https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc65091j [consulted 17/06/2022].; of these, the latter exhibits significantly less corruption, including in the transcriptions.²⁵Roelli, “Zu den Editionen des Liber scalae Machometi”, pp. 315-316; Longoni, Il libro della scala di Maometto, pp. lxxiii-lxxvi; Besson & Brossand-Dandré, Le livre de l’échelle de Mahomet, p. 61. A third manuscript - MS Oxford Laud. Misc. 537Livre de l’eschiele Mahomet, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library Laudensis Misc. 537. - prints Bonaventure’s French translation of the Castilian text: the transcriptions here usually match those in MS Paris, notwithstanding certain changes motivated by Old French phonology.²⁶See, e.g., razur (114a.19) = raçur (MS Oxford 20v.b.24). This consistency between MS Paris and MS Oxford suggests that Bonaventure’s transcriptions, in both translations, were copied directly from Abraham’s Castilian text. However, to ensure clear cross-linguistic comparisons based on Ibero-Romance and Latin diglossia, the focus here remains on the Latin text’s transcriptions, with variations in the French text noted only where of interest. I have inspected both Latin manuscripts digitally, and the Old French manuscript personally; where uncontroversial, I have followed the Latin text provided by Besson and Brossard-Dandré, the most recent critical edition,²⁷See Le livre de l’échelle de Mahomet. Other editions include: Longoni, Il libro della scala di Maometto; Werner, Liber Scalae Machometi; Cerulli, Il Libro della Scala; Muñoz Sendino, La escala de Mahoma. Of these, only Besson and Brossand-Dandré, and Werner before them, pursue high text-critical standards: Roelli, “Zu den Editionen des Liber scalae Machometi”, pp. 317-320. and the French text printed in Wunderli.²⁸See Le livre de l’eschiele Mahomet.

2. Transcribing Arabic in the Iberian Context

Before considering the transcriptions in the Tultusceptru and LSM, it is necessary to provide a model for assessing the general phenomenon.

Transcription here denotes the representation of one language’s phonemes using the graphemes - and phoneme-grapheme alignment - of another.²⁹Philologists usually consider this interchange only in passing: see, e.g., Cantarino, “From Spoken to Written Language and Back”, p. 25. This interchange entails cross-linguistic acoustic perception, whereby non-native phones are assimilated to native phonemic contrasts.³⁰For further linguistic discussion of this perceptual model, see Best & Tyler, “Nonnative and Second-Language Speech Perception”; Best, “A Direct Realist View of Cross-Language Speech Perception”. Thus, Latin transcriptions of Arabic phrases entail three primary variables: Arabic phonemes, and their allophonic realisations (acoustic input); Latin phonemes (perceptual input); and Latin graphemes (graphic output). This paradigm is applicable only where transcriptions are not standardised,³¹Compare Price & Naeh, “On the Margins of Culture”, pp. 261-262. but rather reflect synchronic perception; this is justified here by the external and - within the LSM - internal variation in transcribing the same formulas.³²For this broader variation, see the collection of excerpts from contemporaneous polemical texts at de la Cruz Palma, “Machometus”, pp. 672-772 (an index of names, places, and other Arabic terms included in the Latin texts). Moreover, the perceptual model assumes primarily acoustic, not graphic, input. This condition is satisfied here, as correlation between the Latin and Arabic graphemes (for example, in word boundary placement) is weak, and variation is often phonologically justifiable, but orthographically inexplicable.

This model’s application relies on the particular multilingual environment. Arabic and IberoRomance co-existed in the south of the Iberian Peninsula throughout the period of Muslim rule, subsisting even in reconquered territories until the 12^th-13^th century.³³The precise relationship between Romance and Arabic across al-Andalus remains a fraught question: see Zwartjes, “Andalus”; Corriente, Árabe andalusí y lenguas romances, pp. 125-142; Ferrando, “The Arabic Language among the Mozarabs of Toledo during the 12^th and 13^th Centuries”, pp. 45-48. Whereas the Tultusceptru likely arose among communities continuing to use Romance languages during the territory’s progressive Arabisation, the LSM was composed as part of Alfonso X’s translation movement in Toledo following its reconquest, which relied on incorporated bilingual communities.³⁴Echevarría, “Eschatology or Biography?”, pp. 150-151; Longoni, Il libro della scala di Maometto, p. xiv. On the translation movement, see Procter, “The Scientific Works of the Court of Alfonso X of Castile”; López Álvarez (ed.), La escuela de traductores de Toledo. In either case, the texts’ Latin transcriptions constitute attempts to transmit Arabic phonological information, obtained from Arabic speakers in al-Andalus, to a putatively monolingual Christian reader. Greater specificity as to the sources for the two texts’ transcriptions is elusive, apart from perhaps a Toledan basis for the Arabic used by Abraham.³⁵On the use of Arabic within the Jewish community of Toledo, see Gutwirth, “Asher b. Yehiel e Israel Israeli”.

The model must also account for the diglossia during the applicable period.³⁶See generally Gallego, “The Languages of Medieval Iberia”. In al-Andalus, the dominant low (‘L’) register was the Andalusian Arabic dialect bundle (‘AA’), and the high (‘H’) language, Classical Arabic (‘CA’).³⁷Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 6-9; UZ, Grammar, pp. xi-xii. See also al-Maqqarī’s (d. 1632) account of 10^th-century Andalusian diglossia: The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, vol. 1, pp. 142-143. AA comprised a spectrum of registers, with the 10^th-century Andalusian philologist al-Zubaydī distinguishing an ‘educated’ L form from the general vernacular.³⁸Krotkoff, “The Laḥn al-ʿawāmm of Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī”, p. 7. Conversely, CA reflects the standardised ‘proper Arabic’ appropriate to literary texts and religious contexts, which crystallised around the 10^th century.³⁹On the development of CA from Hijazi Arabic, see van Putten, Quranic Arabic, pp. 215-231, especially pp. 227-230. While normative CA phonology is well-known,⁴⁰See Fischer, A Grammar of Classical Arabic, pp. 16-34. speakers often assimilate CA formulas into vernacular phonological paradigms,⁴¹For examples, see Piamenta, Islam in Everyday Arabic Speech, pp. 10-15. a phenomenon evident in AA.⁴²See, e.g., AA formulas concerning Aḷḷāh: DFDAA, pp. 68-69. As the AA phonological interference in a given interchange is unclear without analysis of the output forms, this paper presents acoustic inputs, in the first place, as phonological ranges between classicising and vernacular realisations.

Diglossia also affected Ibero-Romance speakers. Up to the 11^th century, no clear distinction between the standardised and vernacular language is readily determinable (both labelled Latinus); indeed, Wright argues that Ibero-Romance in this period amounted to “complex monolingualism” with conservative Latin orthography representing innovative phonetic realisations.⁴³See Wright, “Plurilinguismo nella Penisola Iberica (400-1000)”, pp. 115-118, 122-129; Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France, especially pp. 151-161 (on the situation in al-Andalus). See, e.g., the Latin-Romance graphemic variation in 12^th-13^th-century Iberian codes: Emiliano, “Latin or Romance?”. Notably, in al-Andalus, the significance of written Arabic saw a decline in written Latin literacy during the 9^th and 10^th centuries,⁴⁴See generally Wright, “La muerte del ladino escrito en Al-Andalus”. See also Paulus Albarus (d. ca. 861), Indiculus 1667-1680, especially 1677-1678: heu pro dolor, legem suam nesciunt Xp̄iani et linguam propriam non advertunt Latini (“Alas, for shame! Christians do not know their own law, and Latins do not attend to their own language”). while forms of Ibero-Romance - collectively ‘Mozarabic’ - remained a spoken language.⁴⁵See Galmés de Fuentes, Dialectología mozárabe, pp. 14-17, 25. By the 12^th century, however, this situation had progressively given way to diglossia, with a distinction between the scholarly, typically written, H language (here, ‘Latin’) and the L languages (the Ibero-Romance group, including the Castilian dominant in Alfonso X’s Toledan court).⁴⁶Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española, pp. 156-161; Sayahi, Diglossia and Language Contact, pp. 215-218; Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, pp. 171-180; Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, pp. 20-22. While this complex linguistic environment problematises Latin phoneme-grapheme alignment in both texts considered here, few relevant graphemes raise diglossic issues, and novel Ibero-Romance phones are noted. Moreover, the relevant Ibero-Romance phonology is sufficiently conservative to negate diachrony between the Tultusceptru a nd LSM.

3. The Šahāda in the LSM

Throughout the LSM, the author repeatedly transcribes and translates the šahāda, the two-limbed Islamic declaration of faith: lā ilāha illa ḷḷāh / Muḥammadun al-rasūlu ḷḷāh (“There is no god but Aḷḷāh, [and] Muḥammad is Aḷḷāh’s Prophet”).⁴⁷See Qurʾān 37:35, 47:19 (first limb); 48:29 (second limb). The formula pervaded the Muslim world during this period, including al-Andalus.⁴⁸See, e.g., 10^th-century Córdoban conversion formularies: Safran, “Identity and Differentiation in Ninth-Century al-Andalus”, pp. 586-587; Chalmeta, “Le passage à l’Islam dans al-Andalus au Xe siècle”.

As transcriptional input within the Iberian context, however, the underlying CA šahāda may exhibit AA interference. In CA, -V(n)# (in ilāha, Muḥammadun, and rasūlu) is a case ending, while Aḷḷāh exhibits zero ending in pausa. The first syllable of Aḷḷāh is, effectively, prodelided after V#;⁴⁹The underlying CA form may be *ḷḷāh, which gains /#ʔV/ when phrase-initial, preventing impermissible *#CC: Gadoua, “Consonant Clusters in Quranic Arabic”, pp. 64-65; Coetzee, “The Phonology of the Two Hamza’s of Qurʾānic Arabic”. this in turn causes univerbation, shortening the final vowel of underlying illā in the impermissible word-medial syllable CV̄C.⁵⁰See Al-Ani & May, “The Phonological Structure of the Syllable in Arabic”. Moreover, at least in Qurʾānic recitation, the final nasal of Muḥammadun assimilates with /#r/.⁵¹Alfozan, Assimilation in Classical Arabic, pp. 59-60, 96-97. AA diverges from this schema. Like most spoken Arabic dialects after the 8^th century,⁵²See Dévényi, “ʾIʿrāb”; Blau, A Grammar of Christian Arabic, p. 317. AA lacked case endings,⁵³UZ, Grammar, p. 64; Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, p. 86. and, with decay of /#ʔ/,⁵⁴Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, p. 58. permits more prodelision than CA,⁵⁵UZ, Grammar, p. 34, n. 76. including before Aḷḷāh.⁵⁶See, e.g., the formula law (or ma) ša ḷḷāh: DFDAA, pp. 744-745. However, prodelision in the environment /aː#ʔi/ lacks a clear parallel: word-medially, /ʔi/ > /y/ is expected,⁵⁷UZ, Grammar, pp. 8, 35. See also Blau, A Grammar of Christian Arabic, pp. 94-95. while in the poetry of al-Ḥillī (d. 1349) - an oeuvre featuring AA influence⁵⁸See Zwartjes, Love Songs from al-Andalus, p. 133. - the collocation illā iḏā exhibits no word juncture phenomena.⁵⁹al-Ḥillī, Kitāb al-ʿāṭil al-ḥālī 209.2. Further, AA often lost final /h/ (even if retained orthographically),⁶⁰UZ, Grammar, p. 33; Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 57-58. including in Aḷḷāh,⁶¹See, e.g., Ibn Quzmān (d. 1160), Dīwān 21.13.1: yaʿṭīk al-lā n-naǧā (“May Aḷḷāh grant you salvation”). and likely maintained the CA phonemic difference between /l/ and /ɫ/.⁶²UZ, Grammar, p. 21. Finally, AA lost phonemic vowel length, re-allocating the metrical stress accent to the previously most quantitatively prominent syllable.⁶³UZ, Grammar, pp. 36-39; Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 60-66; Janssens, Stress in Arabic and Word Structure in the Modern Arabic Dialects, pp. 158-159. Thus, the hypothetical range of each limb of the vernacularised formula runs:

This paper focuses on the LSM’s transcriptions of the first limb, which the text attests eight times. Almost all cases comprise three words (hereafter denoted ‘(A)’, ‘(B)’ and ‘(C)’ respectively), and are consistently of the form le hVllV hVlalla. The forms in MS Paris are as follows, with variations in other manuscripts provided for comparison:

As both Latin and Arabic accentuation is culminative even where it acquired phonemicity,⁶⁸On the two systems’ similarity, see Allen, Accent and Rhythm, pp. 155-157. the Latin word boundaries may be aligned with the three perceived Arabic prosodic groups. The following schema shows this alignment, along with the hypothetical CA-AA range and regular Latin variants:

The disyllabic form of Latin (B) suggests an AA source, given that elision of the case ending /a#/ before /#ʔi/ is impermissible in CA. Indeed, the LSM’s transcriptions of Arabic Muḥammad(un) and rasūl(u) in the second limb also lack case endings: each Latin rendering terminates at the stem’s final consonant, while the word-initial <(h)a> in Latin razur halla (114a.19) and razul Alla (123c.57-58) indicates the absence of prodelision.

Three aspects of the Arabic-Latin linguistic interchange are determinable from this schema.

First, initial <h> in both (B) and (C) is anomalous. The status of <h> in contemporaneous Latin and Ibero-Romance is contentious: while Classical Latin /h/ was itself unproductive in the vernacular even when represented by <h>,⁶⁹Allen, Vox Latina, pp. 43-45. [h] was the pre-vocalic allophone of Ibero-Romance /f/, with the phoneme causing graphemic alternation <f> ~ <h> around the 10^th and 11^th centuries;⁷⁰See the discussion at Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, pp. 212-223; Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, pp. 90-94; Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish, pp. 23-24. thus, if used purposefully, <h> here should represent a true phone [h]. However, in the Arabic, /h/ appears only in the CA (B) form (albeit at the onset of the second syllable), not the AA form underpinning the Latin (B) form. If the AA (B) form did in fact retain word-final /h/, re-syllabification across the word boundary could have caused word-initial aspiration of (C), subsequently applied to the Latin (B) form by analogy. Alternatively, word juncture hiatus - a feature common in CA on account of phonemic /#ʔ/, but absent in Latin and Ibero-Romance⁷¹Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, pp. 190-191; Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, pp. 60-61. - may justify h-insertion. However, internal Ibero-Romance phonological processes usually remedied hiatus by inserting a glide, not /h/.⁷²Cf. possible h-insertion in hiatus in Old French: Klausenburger, Morphologization, pp. 67-68. Moreover, Arabic /#(ʔ)V/ did not regularly become /#hV/ in Ibero-Romance: Arabic loanwords beginning al- rather produce unaspirated Ibero-Romance al- <al>.⁷³See Kiesler, “Ibero-Romance”.

Further, h-insertion affects almost all transcriptions of vowel-initial Arabic words in the Latin LSM,⁷⁴The only exceptions are unzila (117d.41) < unzila (but MS Oxford 30r.a.5 huncila); Alla (123c.58) < Aḷḷāh (but 114a.19 halla, a form consistently used throughout MS Oxford). with the Arabic definite article al- commonly transcribed by Latin <hal>.⁷⁵The only exceptions are alborak (e.g., 107a.15) < al-burāq; azirat (114d.45) < al-ṣirāṭ; arauka (119b.1) < al-ramkāʾ; arre (119b.3) < al-rīḥ. Curiously, this process may occur prior to the attachment of prefixes, causing apparent word-medial h-insertion: thus, for vhalkaforat (118a.16-17, 18) < wa-l-kaffārāt, the transcriber’s identification of the definite article causes insertion of the sequence <hal>, notwithstanding perceived [wal] (expected <val>).⁷⁶Compare perhaps Paulus Albarus’ insertion of <h> in Hellenised Hebrew names: Ihesus (e.g., Epistole 4.744, 8.146); Iherusalem (e.g., Indiculus 332). Whereas Ihesus may mimic Greek majuscule ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (compare Xp̄s for ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ), the spelling of Jerusalem (which in Greek begins <ΙΕ>, not <ΙΗ>) suggests h-insertion by analogy. In all these cases, the LSM appears to generalise <h> for /∅/, a graphemic use occasionally seen in medieval Spanish texts.⁷⁷Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish, p. 31, n. 25.

H-insertion here may also emphasise lexical foreignness. Comparably, the LSM transcribes Muḥammad as Muahgmet in the second limb,⁷⁸See 114a.19 (cf. MS Vatican 262r.26 tonahgmet), 123c.57. and once elsewhere as Muhagmet (111a.40), but as MachometusCruz Palma, Óscar de la, “Machometus: La invención del Profeta Mahoma en las fuentes latinas medievales”, Medievalia, 20, 2 (2017) pp. 1-772. , a common Latinate standardisation, in unmarked prose.⁷⁹Compare de la Cruz Palma, “Machometus”, pp. 703-705. While the French text draws a similar distinction, the forms do not reflect the same foreignising motivation: Muhagmet (13r.a.30, absent in Latin; 44v.a.1 = 123c.57); Muagmet (14r.b.25-26 = 111a.40; 20v.b.24 = 114a.19); Mahomet (in standard prose). See also the Tultusceptru’s distinction between marked Mohamet (ln. 20), and unmarked, prosaic Mohomad (ln. 18). The <g> in these transcriptions is anomalous. If Muhagmet is preferred, perhaps, just as Classical Latin <gn> [ŋn] ultimately produced Late Latin [nn], the sequence <gm> may have represented [mm], via *[ŋm].⁸⁰See Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, pp. 81, 140; Allen, Vox Latina, pp. 22-25, especially p. 25. Conversely, <hg> in Andalusian works transcribes /ħ/ directly;⁸¹See, e.g., Eulogius, Memoriale 2.15-16: Habdarrahgman < ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. this may suggest corruption (whether by perception or scribal error) of underlying *Muhgamet. In either case, the non-native use of <g>, as well as word-initial h-insertion, likely emphasise transcriptional distance.

Second, the word-medial transcription of the Arabic lateral approximants - consistent across the Latin forms, notwithstanding the MS Vatican spellings of (C) as hVllalla - is atypical: Arabic /l/ is rendered by geminate Latin <ll>, as is emphatic geminate /ɫɫ/; however, non-emphatic geminate /ll/ is rendered <l>. Now, by the 13^th century, Latin /ll/ had phonemicised as palatal /ʎ/ in Old Spanish, distinct from /l/.⁸²Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, pp. 243-244; Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, p. 71; Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish, p. 28. Therefore, the (C) form may exhibit assimilation of the Arabic distinction /l/ vs. /ɫ/ to /l/ <l> vs. /ʎ/ <ll>, mapping velarisation to palatalisation by Ibero-Romance interference.⁸³Cf. rare Ibero-Romance <tl> for Arabic /ɫɫ/ in a rendering of Aḷḷāh: UZ, Grammar, p. 21. Conversely, the inconsistent gemination between the (B) and (C) forms may suggest that the variation arises from the mere difficulty in distinguishing simple and geminated laterals. Further, the Latin gemination (and word boundaries) appear to purposefully obscure the Arabic accentuation: while Classical Latin accentuation was no longer productive in this period, Ibero-Romance usually accented the equivalent syllable;⁸⁴Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish, p. 115; Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish, pp. 21-22. as such, gemination would occasion paroxytone accentuation of the Latin (B) and (C) forms (hV́llV and hVlálla). However, the Arabic accent aligns with these forms’ ultimas.

Finally, the Latin vocalism shows artefacts of imāla (Arabic vowel raising), whereby [e(ː)] results from underlying /a(ː)/. In CA, imāla usually affects /a(ː)/ in the environments i(ː)C(C)__ and __C(C)i(ː), but is precluded where any C is emphatic or guttural.⁸⁵Levin, “The Authenticity of Sībawayhi’s Description of the ʾImāla”, pp. 77-80; Owens, A Linguistic History of Arabic, pp. 201-202. Accordingly, Latin <e> in hille likely exhibits imāla of Arabic /a(ː)/ syllabically adjacent to /i/, aligning the raised phone with Latin /e/,⁸⁶See Torreblanca, “On Hispano-Arabic Historical Phonology”, pp. 38-39, 44-45. while the <a>’s in hVlalla, and in (h)alla in the LSM transcriptions of the second limb, exhibit the inhibiting function of emphatic /ɫ/ in the name Aḷḷāh. However, in most dialects, including AA,⁸⁷Owens, A Linguistic History of Arabic, p. 213; UZ, Grammar, pp. 1-5; Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 22-26. [e(ː)] is the default representation, with [a(ː)] only arising in emphatic or guttural consonantal environments. Thus, the transcriptions may disclose the underlying register: the <e> in Latin le, and the <e> of Muhagmet in the second limb, can only be dialectal imāla, as they lack the CA conditioning environment. This patterning recommends the vocalism le hille hilalla as the closest reflection of the underlying Arabic-Latin interchange, with the common (B) variant halla arising by analogy with (h)alla in the second limb, or by homeoteleuton with (C).⁸⁸In particular, the (B) form halla likely arose from (C) by analogy, while the first <a> in the (C) form halalla arose by metaphony. While the <i> of hilalla better renders Arabic /i/, <e> occasionally transcribes Arabic /i/ in loanwords into Ibero-Romance: Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, 27; UZ, Grammar, pp. 5-6. More significantly, the rendering of vowels confirms that the transcriptional input was an AA variant of the formula, or else exhibited a high degree of AA interference.

Overall, the LSM’s šahāda provides insights into the text’s composition, and the processes underpinning its transcriptions. First, its AA basis - evident in the absent case endings and the non-classical imāla - implies that, despite his CA Islamic sources, Abraham followed the vernacular phonology of Toledo. This election to adopt the vernacularised pronunciations of his milieu, rather than the formalised expressions of the Islamic texts, reflects a previously overlooked aspect of Abraham’s text. Further, the transcriptional mode adopted alienates, rather than acclimates, the Latin reader to Arabic phraseology: far from nativising the foreign forms, the renderings introduce non-Latinate graphemic patterns and obscure the prosody of the original Arabic. This, in turn, disrupts access to the underlying forms, and thereby to the original Islamic formulas.

4. A Possible Formula in the Tultusceptru

The preceding analysis of the šahāda in the LSM suggests a novel reading of the transcription in the Tultusceptru, facilitating recovery of the underlying Arabic input. This expression follows the angel’s explanation for his appearance to Ozim (ln. 16-19):

The subsequent text at ln. 20 - although clearly transcribing Arabic - is presented as an incomprehensible incantation: unlike in the LSM, the author neither acknowledges the foreign phrase as sensible speech, nor provides a translation. Its meaning is further obscured by the possibility of textual corruption: missing words throughout the manuscript betray a poor copyist.⁸⁹Díaz y Díaz, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, pp. 161-162. Despite minor disagreements among prior editors on the word-spacing, inspection of the text itself confirms the reading recently provided by Gil Fernández (here printed with the interpuncts on the manuscript): alla occuber · alla occuber · situleilacitus est · mohamet · razulille.

Scholars usually assume that the Tultusceptru’s transcription reflects the šahāda: this conclusion relies on the phrase’s similarity to the ad̲ān (the call to prayer), which - as performed in al-Andalus⁹⁰See, e.g., the long-held unanimity among 12^th-14^th-century Andalusian jurists on the ad̲ān’s text: Dutton, “Sunna, Ḥadīth and Madinan ʿAmal”, pp. 8-9, 16-19. - also begins with repetition of the takbīr, followed by the šahāda.⁹¹See, e.g., Gil Fernández, Scriptores Muzarabici Saeculi VII-XI, vol. 2, p. 1216, n. 28/29; Wolf, “The Earliest Latin Lives of Muḥammad”, p. 95; González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, p. 128. Others, though in general agreement, are more cautious: Tolan, “Tultusceptru de libro domni Metodii”, p. 84; Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, p. 515. However, while Mohamet razulille clearly reflects the šahāda’s second limb, it is unclear how the sequence situleilacitus est could align with the Arabic of the first limb. Wolf and Hoyland propose that Arabic lā ilā(ha) is discernible in medial le ila; indeed, the Latin does resemble the (A) and (B) forms in the LSM’s šahāda, with similar - if inconsistent - imāla, and without word-initial <h>. However, the surrounding situ … citus est remains obscure. Wolf proposes that situ represents ašhadu (“I testify”), or that situ citus est is Latin (perhaps “was cited in place”) that merged with the Arabic in transmission.⁹²See Wolf, “The Earliest Latin Lives of Muḥammad”, p. 95, n. 19; “Falsifying the Prophet”, p. 116, n. 24; Wolf, “Counterhistory”, p. 18, n. 23. Díaz y DíazDíaz y Díaz, Manuel, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire de Moyen Age, 37 (1970), pp. 149-168., assisted by Vázquez de Benito, instead proposes corruption of Arabic ṣalātuhu ʿalaykum (“His [Aḷḷāh’s] blessing be upon you”).⁹³Díaz y Díaz, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, pp. 162, n. 19, 163. None of these suggestions are wholly satisfactory. Arabic ašhadu fits the formula, but the putative transcription situ is phonologically difficult: whereas Latin <t> is a possible, if unlikely, rendering of Arabic /d/,⁹⁴Intervocalic voicing of underlying /t/, implemented inconsistently across Mozarabic dialects, may recommend a Latin pronunciation /d/ <t>: Galmés de Fuentes, Dialectología mozárabe, pp. 25, 91-100 (Toledo), 175-178 (Murcia), 201-202 (Seville), 236-239 (Granada). Conversely, there is evidence of an infrequent AA interchange /d/ ~ /tˤ/: Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 38-39. Notably, however, only Arabic /d#/ is regularly transcribed by Ibero-Romance <t>: UZ, Grammar, p. 16. Compare LSM haxedu (110c.32). syncope of the initial stressed syllable is anomalous. Further, although -tus est militates in favour of Latin influence, the presence of these segments appears unmotivated. Díaz y Díaz’s Arabic, while semantically clear, is not used formulaically or devotionally in any core Islamic text.⁹⁵This rare collocation does appear in continuous prose in al-Biqāʿī (d. 1480), Naẓm al-durar, vol. 3, p. 360: li-yaḥfaẓa ṣalātahu ʿalaykum (“… so that [Aḷḷāh] may preserve His prayers upon you”).

A neater, hybrid approach may be suggested. Given copyist’s errors elsewhere, the sequence <situle> may be corrupted from underlying siletu by syllabic metathesis - as Díaz y DíazDíaz y Díaz, Manuel, “Los textos antimahometanos más antiguos en códices españoles”, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire de Moyen Age, 37 (1970), pp. 149-168. implicitly proposes - possibly with interference from Latin situ. The form siletu suggests underlying Arabic al-ṣalātu (“the blessing”), with regular assimilation of the liquid before the solar consonant /sˤ/, and loss of initial unstressed vowel before CC. If the Latinate citus est is then isolated, remaining <ila> suggests Arabic ʿalà. On this reading, the transcription and surrounding text represent not the šahāda, but the following:

This approach has three strengths.

The first is its alignment with known Islamic honorifics. The collocation al-ṣalātu ʿalà Muḥammad represents a common formula, attested in a range of contemporaneous texts, often following al-ḥamdu li-llāh (“Praise be to Aḷḷāh”).⁹⁶See, e.g., al-Bazzār (d. 905), Musnad al-Bazzār, vol. 10, p. 477, no. 4681, vol. 11, p. 339, no. 5155; al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), Tārīḫ al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, vol. 8, p. 540; al-ʿAskarī (d. ca. 1010), Muʿǧam al-furūq al-luġawīya, p. 3. Significantly, the related (and common) taṣliya - the phrase ṣalla ḷḷāḥu ʿalayhi [= ʿalà al-nabīy] wasallam (“May Aḷḷāh grant him [i.e., the Prophet] blessings and salvation”)⁹⁷See, e.g., the phrase’s occurrence in 9^th-10^th-century inscriptions at the Great Mosque of Córdoba: Calvo Capilla, “The Visual Construction of the Umayyad Caliphate”, pp. 47-48. - is transcribed by Eulogius, with accompanying translation: zalla allah halla anabi va zallen.⁹⁸Eulogius, Memoriale 2.82-84. Compare Paulus Albarus, Indiculus 1255-1256. This contemporaneous awareness of the taṣliya provides corroborating context for the appearance of the nominal variant al-ṣalātu ʿalà Muḥammad in the Tultusceptru.

Importantly, attestations of this version are often followed by a predicative epithet for Muḥammad, including - as here, and in the šahāda - the title rasūlu ḷḷāh.⁹⁹See, e.g., al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmiḏī (d. ca. 910), al-Manhīyāt, p. 23; al-Ṯaʿālibī (d. 1039), Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ, p. 14. Paired with the prophetic epithet, this formula justifies the Latin verb ciere, here not “to cite”, but “to call upon (by name), invoke”,¹⁰⁰See OED s.v. cieo, def. 6; Firminius Verris s.v. cieo. or else “to proclaim”.¹⁰¹See DMBLS s.v. ciere, def. e. The former sense is common in Classical texts,¹⁰²See, e.g., Livy, Ab urbe condita 22.14.7. including with the explanatory ablative nomine.¹⁰³See, e.g., Suetonius, Nero 46.3. This usage subsisted into Medieval Latin,¹⁰⁴See, e.g., the 7^th-century Vita beati Leudegarii martyris 1.606: inde virum quendam crebrata voce ciebat (“Thereafter he was calling on a certain man with strengthened voice”); Saxo Grammaticus (d. ca. 1220), Gesta Danorum 2.7.17.5-6: quid me Rolvonis generum … tanta voce cies? (“Why do you invoke me, Rolf’s son-in-law, with so great a voice?”). including to introduce direct exclamations.¹⁰⁵E.g., Frithegod (fl. ca. 950-958), De vita Sancti Wilfridi 26.4: euge ciunt cives certatim protinus omnes (“‘Hurrah!’ eagerly exclaim all the citizens at once”). The transcribed text siletu ila … Mohamet razulille should then be understood as direct speech providing the content of the invocation, or else in apposition with the subject of citus est, with the author identifying Ozim with his honorific ‘title’. The insertion of citus est into the midst of the transcription - between the Arabic preposition and its governed noun - is perhaps unexpected; however, this parenthetical use of verbs introducing direct speech was certainly not unknown in later Latin,¹⁰⁶The use of direct speech markers - especially inquit - in mid-position without an earlier verb of speech is attested throughout later Latin: Mikulová, “Verbs Introducing Direct Speech in Late Latin Texts”, pp. 130-133. and here justifiably separates the name Mohamet razulille from the introductory siletu ila.¹⁰⁷An alternative reading is ila<c> [< ʿalayk (“upon you”, in pausal form)], by haplographic omission preceding citus. In this case, citus est instead stands neatly after the complete sentence al-ṣalātu ʿalayk. However, the transcription <a> for Arabic ay is difficult: UZ, Grammar, pp. 7-9; Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 29-31.

Second, this reading is recommended by the text’s internal logic. By inserting a sentence break after the second alla occuber (justifying the manuscript’s interpunct there), the author identifies two separate moments within the angel’s Arabic speech: the teaching of an incantation, and the naming of Muḥammad. This treatment of the takbīr as an invocation of plural godheads was a common polemical device across Iberia and the Christian East.¹⁰⁸See the examples at González Muñoz, “La nota del códice de Roda”, pp. 56-57; Gil Fernández, Scriptores Muzarabici Saeculi VII-XI, vol. 1, pp. 119-120, 124-125. Thus, a separation after the two alla occuber’s is necessary to isolate these as the operative curse, as deployed at ln. 21-22: quia omnis alla occuber advocatio demonum est (“because every alla occuber is a summoning of demons”). Indeed, if the author deemed alla occuber of special significance, reading the transcription as a cohesive whole renders its second half otiose and unmotivated.

Likewise, this separation also neatly fits the narrative context: beyond clearly evoking the šahāda’s two limbs, the pair of distinct Arabic sayings parallels the bipartite structure of the angel’s prior explanation, that he had come to teach words (dicam tibi verba), and to rename Ozim (non vocaris Ozim sed Mohomad). Given the clear shift from the angel’s Latin to his Arabic, this earlier framing is better read as the author’s pre-emptive Latin gloss of the Arabic actually spoken by the angel. Moreover, the narratorial introduction of the transcriptions - et illi inposuit nomen … et precepit illi dicere … - presents the same division of the angel’s act, albeit chiastically: on this reading, the phrase illi inposuit nomen does not refer back to Ozim’s naming, but rather anticipates the subsequent Arabic invocation introduced by citus est.

Finally, the vocalism of Latin razulille offers a linguistic proof. Final Latin <e> shows uninhibited imāla of Arabic /aː/, contrasting with the Tultusceptru’s transcription Alla, the LSM form (h)alla in the šahāda’s second limb, and even Eulogius’ zalla allah. Exceptionally, therefore, the Arabic lateral approximants here are unemphatic, as is regular in CA where Aḷḷāh is prodelided after /i(ː)#/, and the construct phrase univerbated.¹⁰⁹Al-Nassir, Sibawayh the Phonologist, pp. 48-49. Thus, the text must transcribe the Arabic noun phrase in the genitive case, CA rasūli llāh, with Latin <i> reflecting Arabic /i/ (as expected). The new reading explains this morphology, by proposing that the noun phrase stands in apposition with the genitive referent Muḥammad(in) after the preposition ʿalà.

Based on this solution, two further aspects of the honorific formula require comment. First, the case endings -tu (on al-ṣalātu) and -i (on rasūli) imply a CA source. Thus, the transcription Mahomet - lacking the expected endings -in - likely reflects the author’s differential perception, severing the known name from surrounding unfamiliar text; indeed, their familiarity with the pausal form Muḥammad is evident in their use of Mohomad in ln. 18. Second, Latin ila for Arabic ʿalà, and siletu for al-ṣalātu, exhibit dialectal imāla. The latter provides Latin <e> for Arabic /aː/ outside the CA conditioning environment, and both forms exhibit <i> for underlying unstressed Arabic /a/, reflecting the high vowel raising that pervaded all stages of AA.¹¹⁰UZ, Grammar, p. 2. While CA /sˤ/ and /ʕ/ usually inhibit imāla, AA dialects often obscured the phonemic distinction between /sˤ/ and /s/, and lost the phoneme /ʕ/, particularly in lower registers.¹¹¹Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, pp. 48-50, 56-57; UZ, Grammar, pp. 25-27, 32.

Thus, the Tultusceptru’s transcriptions reflect an Arabic idiolect characterised by AA phonology, but CA morphology. This constitutes a concession to fossilised religious terminology within an otherwise dialectal environment.¹¹²On the practice among modern Arabic speakers, see Hallberg, Case Endings in Spoken Standard Arabic, pp. 64-65, 176-196. The phenomenon’s appearance here highlights the dynamism of Arabic in al-Andalus, and models the diglossic interweaving of linguistic features.

As for the Tultusceptru’s author, their transcription practice - unlike that of the LSM - is sympathetic to the underlying Arabic forms, paying close attention to Arabic vowel quality and prosodic groupings. The transcriptions show that the original author, far from a crude polemicist, had some knowledge of Islamic honorifics, and transcribed the Arabic forms with care. Identifying the polemicist’s greater awareness of Islam brings other elements of their polemic into focus: for example, the author’s depiction of Muḥammad as a corrupted monk - a duality emphasised at ln. 23-24: dum esset vas Christi factum est vas Mamone (“All the while being a vessel of Christ, [Ozim] became a vessel of Mammon”) - may be ascribed to a desire to justify similarities between Islamic thought and Christian doctrine that the author themselves had identified.

5. Transcribing the Takbīr

The texts’ approaches to one further formula usefully corroborate these results. Both texts transcribe the takbīr: common in al-Andalus,¹¹³See, e.g., Ibn al-Šabbāṭ’s (d. 1282) account of the Muslim conquest: Clarke, “Medieval Arabic Accounts of the Conquest of Cordoba”, pp. 54-55. the expression Aḷḷāhu akbar occurs in the ad̲ān’s opening, as part of the prayer, and as a devotional formula. In light of the AA features outlined above, its phonological range is:

CA: /ʔaɫ.ˈɫaːhu#ˈʔak.bar/ ~ AA: */ʔaɫ.ˈɫak.bar/¹¹⁴The AA elision here is hypothetical: see UZ, Grammar, p. 34. or */ʔaɫ.ˈɫa#ˈʔak.bar/

The Tultusceptru provides the clear rendering alla occuber three times (ln. 20 (x2), 21). Conversely, the LSM produces it once, as halla huha kybar (110c.28), translated in text as magnus est Deus (“God is great”).¹¹⁵Cf. MS Vatican 253r.21 halla huha kibar; MS Oxford 13r.a.21 halla hua kibar (the word-spacing, marked on the manuscript by interpuncts, agrees with the Latin texts; cf. Wunderli’s reading hallahu akibar: Le livre de l’eschiele Mahomet, p. 54). Given the following discussion, the suggestion that kybar represents a (phonologically obscure) transcription of Arabic ǧabbār (“mighty”) may be ruled out: cf. de la Cruz Palma, “Machometus”, p. 379.

Both texts transcribe Aḷḷāh as expected (with environmental /ɫ/ inhibiting imāla of either vowel), and the LSM exhibits its usual word-initial h-insertion. The LSM transcription’s word boundaries, however, are anomalous. In particular, the final syllable of CA Aḷḷāhu, and the first of akbar, have merged to produce Latin huha. The intervocalic <h> further evidences the LSM’s generalised word-initial h-insertion, suggesting that it adhered to perceived Arabic /#ʔ/ before word boundary placement.¹¹⁶Contrast the French hua, without internal h-insertion. Conversely, the word-initial <h> of huha, though perhaps automatically inserted, may reflect the original CA aspirate, an ambiguity highlighting the infelicity of the foreignising transcriptions. As in the LSM’s šahāda, the Latin word boundaries obscure the underlying Arabic accents, which here align with the ultimas of Latin halla and huha. Given the rarity of multisyllabic oxytone words in Ibero-Romance,¹¹⁷Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish, pp. 21-22. this consistent patterning suggests either disregard for Arabic accentuation, or else emphasis of the transcriptional gap.

The Tultusceptru also reflects CA -hu. The <o> in occuber anomalously renders the first /a/ in Arabic akbar. In loanwords into Ibero-Romance, this reflex normally requires environmental emphatic or guttural consonants in the underlying Arabic.¹¹⁸Corriente, A Grammatical Sketch, p. 25; UZ, Grammar, p. 6. See generally Bakalla, “Tafxīm”. Thus, Latin /o/ <o> here must be perceptual. From CA input /aː.hu#ʔa/, the form suggests perceived [aː.hu̯a], whereby the Latin hearer, in disregarding the non-native hiatus at word break, omits the intervocalic glottal stop, and so reinterprets /u/ without syllabicity (i.e., /aː.(h)wa/). This non-Latinate sequence is then resolved as /a#o/, with the vowel following the labialised consonant undergoing rounding (as is typologically common).¹¹⁹Padgett, “Consonant-Vowel Place Feature Interactions”, pp. 1761-1776.

Further, the anaptyctic vowel /kVb/ in both Latin transcriptions disrupts the non-native Latin sequence */VkbV/.¹²⁰Cser, Aspects of the Phonology and Morphology of Classical Latin, p. 48. The Tultusceptru’s choice of the high back vowel /u/ in occuber is conditioned by the [+high][+back] features of environmental <c> [k].¹²¹Compare the anaptyctic mid-high back /o/ at Paulus Albarus, Indiculus 1074: quem illi Cobar vocant, hoc est, maiorem (“… which they call Cobar, that is, ‘greater’). See also the anaptyxis of /u/ in George Monachus’ 9^th-century Greek transcription (Chronicon, vol. 2, p. 706, 8-9): Ἀλλά, Ἀλλά, Οὐά, Κουβάρ, Ἀλλά. This Greek form and the Tultusceptru’s transcription likely resulted from distinct perceptual events: whereas the univerbised Latin occuber includes a treatment of perceived [aː.hu̯a] with environmental rounding, the Greek transcriber perceived the semi-vowel as the syllable onset (i.e., /a#wa/). Cf. Gil Fernández, Scriptores Muzarabici Saeculi VIII-XI, vol. 1, p. 125. Moreover, the spelling with geminated <cc> provides the correctly aligned accentuation óccuber. These spellings together suggest a false etymology with Latin occubare or occumbere (“to lie dead”),¹²²See DMBLS s.v. occubare, s.v. occumbere, defs. 3-5; Firminius Verris s.v. cumbo. referring to the deathly effect of conversion identified at ln. 24-25. Conversely, the epenthetic <y> in the LSM form kybar in MS Paris, apparently to represent Latin /i/ (as in MS Vatican and MS Oxford kibar),¹²³This mapping of <y> to /i/ is standard in Latin: Allen, Vox Latina, pp. 52-53. appears unmotivated; however, taken together, the <y> and <k> (rendering both Arabic /k/ and /q/ throughout the LSM),¹²⁴See, e.g., vhalkaforat (118a.16-17, 18) < wa-l-kaffārāt; kodem (111a.39-40) < quddām. However, <c> is used for both phonemes at syllable coda: halmacfuf (122a.56-57) < al-makfūf; hacrop (111a.39) < aqrib. suggest a foreignising transcription.

Overall, both texts’ transcriptions here directly reflect a CA source; this suggests that AA interference hardly affected the takbīr, or else that the CA case morphology was fossilised within the vernacular. More significantly, these cases confirm the earlier conclusions on transcriptional style: the LSM again uses non-Latinate features to obscure the underlying Arabic, while the Tultusceptru provides a more representative rendering of the Islamic expression.

6. Conclusion

This study’s methodology establishes a general schema of the parameters - both phonological and socio-linguistic - that affect transcriptions of Islamic formulas on the Iberian Peninsula; this facilitates a closer reading of the previously neglected transcriptional evidence in Mozarabic and other Iberian bilingual texts considering Arabic phrases.

The model’s effectiveness is evident in its previously unrecognised capacity to extract consistent linguistic data from the transcriptions, as well as in the novel perspectives it provides on the surveyed texts. For the LSM, the AA aspect of the Arabic input belies the text’s sophisticated reliance on Islamic sources, with the purposeful vernacularisation suggesting a duality between the author’s bookish research and linguistic exposure. However, the transcriptions also obscure the underlying Arabic, rendering phrases in a way that highlights Islam’s foreignness, rather than accurately conveying phonological information. In the Tultusceptru, the model remedies a prior misreading of the underlying Arabic. The text transcribed - an honorific of Muḥammad - reflects the author’s greater exposure to Islamic sources, while its integration into the surrounding narrative indicates their awareness of the two-fold structure of the Islamic faith, encompassing both God and Prophet. Moreover, the author’s more accurate rendering of Islamic formulas reflects a desire to engage substantively with Islamic thought, which in turn should prompt a re-examination of the text as a significant witness of Christian-Muslim relations in al-Andalus.