Arab Heritage in Malta

Very interesting dialogue. well done

May I put some comments, I classify myself as an amateur history enthusiast, who in my spare time try to reach for an answer shared by many who are we Maltese?

First to the surname Saliba very recently Prince Charles went to Turkey and on the border with Syria met a local Christian Bishop named Saliba, he was one of the dwindling Christian Armenian residents in that part.

First we must tackle why there were not any cemetries found from the arabic period? these cannot be destroyed as evidence is that Muslims enjoyed freedom under the Normans.

Secondly I agree with certain native historian that for a long period after the defeat of the Byzantines by the Arabs, Malta was depopulated, certain Arab historian of that time said that Malta was a place for vessels to call and rest,before completing their journey home and a hiding place for some escapees. To note in the west part of the island we have a valley called wied ir-Rum. This is in no way in relation with alcoholic Rum, but Arab lords refered to the Greeks by that name as ancient Romans i.e Byzantines.

Arab advances through the North African littoral pushed peoples from eastern mediteranean who accepted the new religion and fought for the common cause as allies to the arabs, thus can that be that people who inhabited Malta were in fact from the Lebanon/Syria area in the late 9th century.

To the question of us Maltese wheter now in 2008 what is our genetic relation, The answer is that after the Great siege Maltese population was increased by huge numbers from Christian Europe see the most common surnames and even the not so common ones. The magority is of Sicilian, Italian,Spanish,Greek, Jewish, Lebanese/Syrian Christian,some portion of French,German,Slav and very recent addition(last colonial rule) British. the latter surnames account to 7-8% of the population, and believe it or not a lot of Italian surnames came in the British period due to the upheavals of the 1800's in the peninsuila.

My answer is that if there was some arabic blood in the beggining it was overwhelmed by intermarriages from the European additions in the centuries that followed, not to forget that the first so called arab invaders were themselves the fruit of intermarriages of overwhelming allies who accepted the new religion.Another observation is that our forefathers were intellegent enough to keep to their tongue and accept or loan some new words and phrases from the incoming settlers, as a detterent from total submission to new rulers,wheter they come from the North or the South.

Do any of you speak Aramaic? What came through Arabic is Aramaic...

Maltese is easily understood in North Africa and in countries like Syria and Lebanon if you take care to remove all words of Italian and European origin. I know from personal experience, not just travel but also years residing in Egypt.

To write that the Maltese language " .. owes nothing to Arabic or Sicilian or Italian" is to misunderstand how languages grow and develop. English owes much to Latin and French. Maltese owes much not just to Arabic, Sicilian and Italian but also to French, Castellano, Catalan and English to greater or smaller degrees. Which is not to stay it is not a language in its own right, it is indeed that. The Maltese language developed from Arabic. Over many centuries it encountered and was shaped by multiple linguistic influences and it is now a language in its own right quite distinct from the languages it was influenced by.

Maltese people are not Arabs but they have Arabs among their ancestors and it is ludicrous to claim that somehow all elements of the Arab presence disappeared and subsequently the non Arab ancestors of the Maltese arrived on the island.

Many Maltese are sadly ignorant of their own history, yes this is true, and they are - equally sadly - unaware of the glorious periods of Arabic history, of the many contirbutions from mathematics to poetry, that Arabs gave world culture . The same is not true of Sicilians who are well aware that Sicily's Arab period was one of the most glorious in that island's long history, a golden era that witnessed a flowering of the arts and sciences, of culture and agriculture.

I fear that what underlies the sometimes hysterical insistence on our "not being Arab" is racial and religious prejudice. I hope I am wrong. And I hope, if unfortunately I am right, that we may soon grow beyond this unelightened attitude.

Jien minix arab, u lanqas taljan. JIEN MALTI.

I too am Maltese and proud of it. No need for capital letters.

It is enough for me to day I am Maltese, I don't need to define it by saying Maltes is Not X, Y OR z.

I am simply, calmly, very serenely Maltese.

I wrote in English to be polite, because I speak it, and this web site is in English.

what about the Maltese word for god: Allah?

The Last of the Phoenicians - the Maltese People

When National Geographic explorer Spencer Wells and Pierre Zalloua a geneticist from the American University of Beirut embarked on a genetic study of the Y chromosome, to trace the male line of descent in the Mediterranean basin, little did they expect to find that more than 50% of the Y chromosome lineages in today's Maltese population is identical to that of the Phoenicians.

To see the full report on their study.

The Y chromosome – Paternal Inheritance

The Y chromosome is a chromosome, which is exclusive to males, (females being XX whilst males are XY).
The Y-chromosome is therefore passed on only to a son and only from his father – so there is no contribution from the mother in this regard.
Therefore studies of the Y-chromosome in a particular population are actually a study of the paternal lineage.
The genetic markers of a Y-chromosome in brothers from the same father are identical – even when the mother is different.
Spencer Wells and Zalloua used as a reference for their genetic prototype the DNA extracted from human remains discovered in Turkey, as well as that extracted from a human jaw (4,000 years old) found in a mountain cave at Raskifa, Lebanon.
Wells and Zalloua compared this DNA with the DNA in the Y chromosome of present day Maltese males- and to their surprise found that more than 50% of the Y chromosome lineages in today's Maltese population is identical to that of the Phoenicians.
Wells himself could only speculate about this surprise finding ‘Perhaps the population on Malta wasn't as dense at the time. Perhaps when the Phoenicians settled in Malta, they killed off the existing population, and their own descendants became today's Maltese’.
I propose that the Phoenician men married Maltese women in large numbers. This would explain the paternal heritage of the present Maltese Male population – of course the Phoenician men might have killed off a few Maltese males as well whilst in the process of taking their women folk.
The fact remains that the results of Wells and Zalloua are consistent with a settlement in Malta of people from the Levant, and that this points to the Phoenicians

So who were the Phoenicians?

The Phoenicians, who are referred to as Sidonians in the Old Testament, and as Phoenicians by the Greek poet Homer, were Semites, and were related to the Canaanites of ancient Palestine.
They seem to have originated in an area in the Middle East - essentially today’s Lebanon –some 5000 years ago. They founded their first settlements on the Mediterranean coast about 2500BC.
The name Phoenician – a Greek word meaning the red people – because of the Purple dye, called Tyrian purple which the Phoenicians used to dye textiles – they extracted this dye from the shells of certain sea snails (the Murex Snail).
The Phoenicians were maritime traders and they established a “new land” Carthage (k-art = which means land in Maltese and hadash means new) as their primary colony in North Africa (now Tunisia).
The Phoenician fleets travelled throughout the Mediterranean and even ventured further into the Atlantic certainly to Britain.
When Alexander the Great of Macedonia invaded Asia he defeated the Persians and the Phoenicians, who gradually lost their separate identity and they were absorbed into the Greco-Macedonian Empire. The Phoenician cities became Hellenised, and, in 64 BC, even the name of Phoenicia disappeared altogether, when the territory was made part of the Roman province of Syria.
The most important Phoenician contribution to our civilization is probably the alphabet consisting of twenty-two characters; it is the basis for all Western alphabets. The Phoenician alphabet contained no vowels – 22 consonants – and is described as Abjad (Maltese meaning white or pure).
Phoenicians referred to Malta as MLT (probably pronounced MALET) meaning shelter – and they referred to the sister island of Gozo as GL (probably pronounced GOL) meaning trading ship/vessel.
Each Phoenician city had its special god, known as its “Baal”, or lord, a term still used by the Maltese however now in a rather derogatory sense (meaning bastard).
Hannibal – whose name means “Chosen or Anointed” (Hanni) by the god Baal – a Carthaginian - according to tradition, was born in Malta (247 BC).
Hannibal’s surname was Berka (Maltese for Lightning). Hannibal at the age of 29 commanded the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) these wars lasted 17 years.
An area in Rabat Malta is known as Hal Barka

William Drummond discovered a tomb in Binghajsa containing the bones of Hannibal

ref 1810 Sir William "Essay on a Punic inscription found in the island of Malta."

Hannibal died around BC 183 (aged 64) having committed suicide in Bithniya (Asia Minor) to avoid falling into the hands of the Romans – his bones were brought to Malta – probably because of his birth connection to the island

The Phoenicians built a temple for their main goddess Astarte at tas-silg in Malta– and it is believed that another temple dedicated to Melkart (another of their gods), lies under the foundations of fort St Angelo

The Phoenicians referred to their sacred places (as sanctuary – sacred wood – as Nemusa) – this inscription NMS can be found in the archaeological museum of Genoa.
This word Nemusa – Maltese for mosquito – makes you wonder - perhaps these woods were infested with mosquitoes?
The Phoenicians moved inland in Malta and they probably were the first to have established Mdina and Rabat some 800 years BC.
The Phoenicians also founded what eventually became Sicily's largest city, Palermo which they called Zis

Phoenicians may have discovered the manufacturing of glass and perhaps also perfected the technique to produce clear glass – (although this is disputed by some) – nonetheless glass blowing is still an ongoing industry in present day Malta.

Deciphering the Phoenician Language

In 1694 a pair of Candelabra (Cippus) marble columns were discovered at the Tas-Silg Punic temple in Malta
Because the Cippe were inscribed in two languages Greek and Carthaginian it was possible for French scholar, Abbe Barthelemy, to decipher and reconstruct the Phoenician Language and alphabet.

The Cippe de Malte are to Phoenician understanding what the Rosetta Stone is to ancient Egyptian.

One of these candelabras can still be seen at the National History Museum in Valletta the

The other candelabra is housed in the Louvre in Paris - a gift from Knight of Malta Grand Master de Rohan to French King Louis XIV

The Cippe were gifts (votive) offered by the brothers Abdasar and Aserkemor to the Carthaginian god Melkart -- for having shown his mercy in saving them from drowning at sea.

an exhibition at Institut du monde arabe in Paris on 6 October 2007 , until 20th April 2008 on the history of the Phoenicians.

La Méditerranée des Phénicians, de Tyr à Carthage, Institut du monde arabe, Paris, until 20 April 2008

A Maltese Commemorative Stamp issued in 1965 commemorating the Phoenician Cippe

The Pharaoh Hound introduced by the Phoenicians to Egypt and to Malta.
The Maltese refer to this intelligent and lively dog as Kelb tal Fenech – Fenech can mean Rabbit or Phoenician (FENIKI).

In 1935, a burial tomb of a dog was found in the great cemetery west of the Pyramid of Cheops at Giza with the following inscription recording the ritual burial ceremony, "The dog which was the guard of His Majesty, Abuwtiyuw is his name."

This was a "Pharaoh Hound" type dog.

The Pharaoh Hound is the National Dog of Malta (since 1979) and is referred to in Maltese as "Il Kelb tal Fenek". Many translate this as "the dog of the rabbit".

I contend that the word "Fenek" here refers to the Phoenicians (Fenici in Maltese - Feniki) -admittedly the Pharaoh Hound is an excellent hunting dog, and was probably used for hunting rabbits by the Phoenicians

The Phoenicians introduced the Pharaoh Hound to various places including Egypt, and most probably also to Spain - a land which the Phoenicians named tsepan, “rabbit land “, later translated by the Romans into eSpania.

Phoenician words
Maltese Equivalent

								
RK 		Spirit or Wind		Ruh	
FNK		Phoenician		Fenici	
								
Alef 		Ox			Alef to feed animals
Bth		House/nest		Bejta	
MXT		Comb   			Moxt	
								
Gml		Camel			Gemel	
													
								
ZYN		To weigh		Tizen	
								
KHTH		Wall			Hajt	
								
YD		Hand			Id	
								
MM		Water			Ilma	
								
Ayn		Eye			Ghajn	
								
TSD		Fishing			Tistad	
								
RSH		Head			Ras	
								
SHN		Tooth			Sinna	

Dr Frank Portelli MD FRCS(ED) FRSM