Musta'arabi Jews - Background

Background

The word "Musta'arabi" itself, and its Hebrew equivalent mista'arevim, meaning "those who live among the Arabs", are derived from the Arabic "musta'rib" (مستعرب), meaning “arabized”. Compare with the term "Mozarab" (mozárabe in Spanish, borrowed from Arabic) to refer to Arabized (but not Islamized) Christian Spaniards in Arab ruled Islamic Spain. "Musta'arabi" was also used by medieval Jewish authors to refer to Jews in North Africa, in what would become the modern states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya (which also underwent cultural and linguistic Arabization following the Muslim conquest there).

Following the Muslim conquest of Syria, Syria and the surrounding region was brought under Arab rule in the first half of the 7th century, and the Jews of the land, like the Christian majority at that time, became culturally Arabized, adopting many of the ways of the new foreign elite minority rulers, including the language. Furthermore, some of the Jews, and the greater part of the Christians for that matter, were also Islamized, and these form the ancestors of the bulk of the "Arab Muslims" of the Levant.

Musta'arabim, in the Arabized Hebrew of the day, was used to refer to Arabic-speaking Jews native to Greater Syria and Palestine who were, "like Arabs" or "culturally-Arabic orientated." These Musta'arabim were also called Murishkes or Moriscos by the Sephardi immigrants. This may be either a corruption of "Mashriqis" (Easterners) or a Ladino word meaning "like Moors" or "Moorish" (compare with the Spanish word Morisco).