Thank you a very informative and pleasant comment.

Yes, it is amazing that Arabic is still recognizable in Malta after all these centuries. I continue to be amazed by the terms in Malta.

The other day, I came across the Pharaoh hound which is the native breed of dog in Malta. The name is "Kelb tal-Fenek". Kelb is the same in Arabic كلب but it is pronounced Kalb. The plural form is "Klieb", and in standard Arabic it is كلاب "Kilab". The Maltese pronunciation would be identical to bedouin dialects used today in North Africa (e.g. tribes West of Alexandria in Egypt, Libya, ...etc.). Very interesting.

What is more amazing is that the Arab dialect that Maltese derived from, still in use in present day Malta, goes back maybe 10 centuries. It looks very similar to present day North African dialects. This means that Arabic has undergone a quick transformation from its native homeland circa 7th century, to 10th century, then the rate of change of the dialects in that regions that remained Arab (and Muslim) slowed down ...

As for your name, Saliba, it is interesting. The name is still used in Lebanon/Syria/Palestine among native Arab Christians. "Salib صليب" means "Cross". Its use in Malta means that it was introduced after conversion of the population from Islam to Christianity.

Thanks again.
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Khalid Baheyeldin

hey there! I'm another maltese saliba (although I'm born in egypt, my father was maltese and that's why i have the maltese nationality)I live now in france. I'm also very interested in knowing more about my family's geanalogy... you can find very little information on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saliba
thanks
caroline

Relatively recently Maltese geneticist prof. Felice together with other scientists from around the Mediterranean has attested some important statements that should be mentioned here. First, that basically the Maltese are predominantly of Southern Italian heritage and secondly that there is no significant genetic input from North Africa. Unfortunately The Times of Malta does not keep a public and free version of older past editions online, if anyone is interested they're invited to do their own research.

What should be said is that it shouldn't be excluded that when the Saracens ruled Malta, they effectively brought about changes in names and surnames on the local population (particularly, surnames weren't in use in those days, but nicknames probably were). This is my hypothesis, yet most modern historians attest that Saracen Malta was in fact barely inhabited and the contemporary Maltese population is a result of post-Saracen migration to Malta from Europe.

What is not thought nowadays, speaking of the Maltese psyche, is British cultural manipulation which sought the further arabisation of the Maltese language in their official process termed "deitalianisation of the Maltese" which was kickstarted in the 19th century and proceeded way into the 20th century as part of British geopolitical and imperialist plans. This is all black on white in official British reports such as the 19th century Keenan Report, which in order to aid the deitalianisation and anglicisation of the Maltese the removal of any non-Arabic element in the Maltese language was sought as part of the plans. Prior to such self-serving British plans, no Maltese would have ventured to say that the Maltese are in any way Arabs as he would have been taken for a fool (as should anyone doing the same nowadays).

Historically, it is attested that Saracen Malta was not heavily populated and that most modern Maltese actually found their way on the islands after Saracen rule. Moreover, under Spaniard rule the remaining Muslims were expelled. This was around the 15th. century, a century which saw what Maltese historians occasionally term the "forgotten siege", where around 18,000 Saracens under the leadership of Kaid Ridavan invaded Malta to be resisted and defeated by the Maltese themselves. A similar fate happened to the Ottomans and their Saracen allies in the 1565 Great Siege of Malta. Our forefathers proved by shedding blood they did not want to be Arabic. Today we're passed that, but we shall not accept being considered Arabic and that should be because we aren't, and not because of any disrespect towards Arabs (though I won't attempt to fool anyone, Arabs unfortunately are looked down by much of the common folk in Malta even though this is controlled).

This Arab association is exclusively the product either of people who mistake a minor influence from a major one (the Arabic) or the political manipulations of the British Empire which in the process of "deitalianisation" sought to "anglicise" and further "arabise" the Maltese (always in order to deitalianise a people having an essentially Italic culture as attested by official British documents and an early Encyclopedia Britannica itself) or even worse the pro-Arab babble of a certain Dom Mintoff and his fellow supporters who rarely know much about history and culture and whom have been easily hoodwinked repeatedly as long as social services kept flowing in.

No one denies an Arabic influence, Maltese nationalists of old used to say bluntly that the "Maltese language" was essentially an "Arabic dialect" but they, rightly, never accepted the notion that the Maltese were Arabic. Before anyone, Arab or "Maltese", speaks about our history they should know that most Maltese barely know their history as a primary result of British imperialism and general popular carelessness in the fields is corrupted and was never mended. Sacaren rule persisted in other parts of Europe moreso than in Malta, they have little problems with identity yet the Maltese have it due to British manipulations of it. The history of Malta, as always stated by Maltese nationalists, went hand in hand with that of Sicily, excluding when the British came about and legally usurped the islands through power politics from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The history of Malta also includes rejection of any affiliation with the Arabs as far as identity goes and not to mention military resistance to repeated invasion and piracy in days that, God be praised, are gone by. Some must face it, the Arabic association is at most an "exotic" association, the true strong ethnic links of the Maltese are with nearby Sicily and Italy, this being something the British openly and officially sought (with relevant success) to eliminate in the Maltese psyche.

Stop trying to make Arabs out of us, we're Maltese. Stop trying to do so, especially if you're Arabs. You'd discover two things if you continue, that the general historically ignorant Maltese populace would dislike you even more, and secondly you'd lose the respect that historically knowledgable Maltese try to accord you but will fail to do so if you keep on muddling our history. The Maltese are so not Arabs that when my grandparents used to live in Alexandria in the early decades of the 20th century they ended up expelled with other Europeans during the Suez Canal affair.

Refer to the above genetic, professional and academic article by geneticist prof. Alexander Felice and to the history and consistent attitude of the Maltese throughout the ages. Most Maltese surnames are in fact of Romance origin, and if one delved into Maltese surnames though the ages one would further find that many more Italian sounding surnames disappeared in Malta probably due to mixture into other families through marriage. What was attempted in the past is not was rather an arabisation, so much so that even during the rule of the Knights of Malta a particular individual tried to give a semitic origin to every Maltese native surname in a work that is the laughing stock of any serious researcher in the field, British imperial cultural policy and Mintoffian yearn for good relation with Libya (mostly to get some economic benefit out of it, such as oil) also sought to push forward the idea of the Maltese as Arabs. That is either ignorance or deception.

I write this with no ill feeling towards Arabic heritage, culture or civilisation, I just find it absolutely incorrect if not low to try to associate the Maltese with the Arabs because we are not the latter, and we have been in this identitarian trouble mostly thanks to the British empire which muddled our identity with such notions as "Maltese = Arabs" and other even more ridiculous notions as the "Punic Thesis". The latter thesis in fact used in the deitalianisation process as a sort of glorious and non-Arabic, albeit semitic, strategem which was rejected by Maltese nationalists opposed to such process whom particularly stated that Maltese was an Arabic dialect and condemned its anti-Arabic usage to fool the ignorant sections of the Maltese population, obviously the same Nationalists would never have accepted the equation "Maltese = Arabs" and neither would any Maltese with a decent grip of the questions involved.

And to Norman Saliba, remember that Saliba denotes a Christian heritage, moreover in a book on Maltese surnames that you can find in Malta it is also held that that surname was associated with European Christian slaves under the Muslim yoke, I stress the fact that surnames were not so common and were definitely not so during the Saracen rule over Malta (which by the way, came about after repeated sieges against Byzantine Malta, Byzantine Malta was there for 500 years, yet Saracen Malta was for far less). To Norman Saliba again, remember that the Normans liberated Malta from Arabic domination and returned it to where it belonged, Southern Europe. Your name doesn't really speak so much of an Arabic connection, but rather the opposite!

I'd like to structure this systematically, so sorry if it sounds a bit impersonal
Firstly, 'arab' is not the same as 'arabic-speaking'. Most arabic speaking people of today are not genetically arab. So southern Italy is not different in this; they were not arabs genetically of course - at least not most of them - but they adopted arabic as a language and so came to be known as arabs - like everyone else who did so

Secondly people speaking arabic dialects are almost certain to understand modern standard arabic - even if not fully. The difference is a bit like english now and shakespearean though not even as severe as that. It is not by any means another language - we understand even each others dialects if we speak slowly, and can choose not to say certain local nouns and speak normally to each other. And in fact what I've read of the maltese language's arabic content is closer to standard arabic (افصح لغةً) than normal egyptian arabic.

Nobody is trying to say malta is ONLY arab, same as no-one said that egypt is ONLY arab. What this article is highlighting is that the links with arabic are greater than most people would realise, due to historic reasons.

Maltese is NOT a dialect of arabic of course, but not because its structure has changed. In fact the structure is close to being exactly the same. What makes it its own language is that there are so many loanwords.

Islam and Christianity are not by any means a measure of where someone's from. They are divine religions, and so can be found around the world. There has also been in the mediterranean region a tolerance between the two religions which people overlook due to the occasional intolerance. So let's leave that out.